Toshiba player disk error

[Buzzword]

I've made approximately 200 home movie, wedding, slideshow, etc. dvd's for customers using Taeyo Yuden, DVD-R, 4.7GB, 8X disks with a 100% success rate. I recently created 5 dvd's for someone who gets a disk error whenever any of the disks are launched from her Toshiba SD-1009U player. At first I thought it was the disks, given that I mistakenly created the dvd's on TY's 16X speed disks. I re-created the dvd's using the 8X disks and the same error occurs. She has not had a chance to try the disks on any other player. She can play her movies and cd's fine.

The research I've done shows that this player will play DVD-R's. However other comments have stated that this player might not play recordable media, or that the lens might be dirty or that it's a crummy player. Most of the comments are from the 2001-2007 timeframe.

Does anyone have more recent information or experience with this player that would indicate or verify what could be causing the problem?

Thanks!

[hech54]

There were older Sony players that would not play any "recordable" media too....including CD-R....so it's possible. Your only "next shot" will be a DVD+R booktyped to DVD-ROM burned with ImgBurn.

[lowellriggsiam]

With older players I have found greater compatibility with +R dvds. The speed at which you burned it shoudln't enter into it. Panasonic DVDs and some other brands had outright random compatilility issues with every dvd player. Then again some DVD players are just finicky.

[jman98]

Buzzword - NOTHING you do will ever have 100% success. You're always going to have a customer like this lady who will say "All my other discs play fine". Who knows? Her player may be old and just have problems with any burnable DVD media. Or it might be calibrated in some weird way where it doesn't like TY discs and maybe some lower quality brand would work better. Or it may prefer DVD+R over DVD-R. I wouldn't ever rule out the possibility of consumer idiocy where someone does something stupid like trys to play a disc that is upside down, although since she says that other discs work OK that's probably not the problem.

It's your call as to whether or not you're willing to try an almost infinite series of solutions to this problem, none of which may work. You could try burning at the slowest speed possible. You could try DVD+R. You could try a different brand of burnable DVD. You might find that after doing a million different things that NOTHING you do works for this lady because her old DVD player is a piece of crap. If it was me, I'd try to push back on her. Bring her into your shop. Play the discs on a PC and on several different DVD players in front of her to show her that if her player won't play them, that's because it sucks. Some old DVD players last a long time with only minor problems and consumers won't give them up until the totally stop working, even though they are showing signs of wear and tear. If you don't convince her that her player is to blame, your going to spend a lot of time and money finding a solution for her, assuming there even is one. My fear would be that you would find that, say, Memorex DVD-R discs (which are bad) work fine for her and that you'll just put this into your bag of tricks as a solution for the next problem customer and that won't work at all for them. The nature of burnable media is that you're not going to find a solution that works on 100% of customers' players. You're always going to find somebody that nothing you do will work for. That's why I say you need to quickly show her that this is HER problem and not YOUR problem.

[Buzzword]

Thanks all, and Jman I hear you. I'm going to wait for her to test the disks on a couple other players and when they work - which I'm sure they will - that could convince her to upgrade her player. I don't have a shop per se but I did tell her I have two players that those disks worked fine on.

If they do work for her on other players then she might be ok with the product I gave her. However just for my own edification I'm going to burn her one +R disk just to see if it works.