Panasonic DMR-EH53 record to DVD-RW issue

[stigj]

I just replaced my Pioneer DVR-5100H HDD plus DVD-recorder with a Panasonic DMR-EH53 HDD plus DVD-recorder and have a curious issue when copying videos to a DVD-RW disc. Whenever I use DVD-RW discs these cannot be played or even read on my PC. The disc becomes visible in Windows Explorer, but the only file that is seen is the desktop.ini file. I have tried multiple players to see if the video can be played, but no luck. I have also tried to read the disc with Isobuster and Video ReDo TV Suite, but the content is just not found.

When I use a DVD-R disc I have no issue and can both play and read the discs. Tried searching the net and see that there has been some issues with reading DVD-RW in Windows, but that seems all quite some time ago. I have Windows 7 with the latest updates installed. The DVD-drive in my PC also had no issues with reading DVD-RW discs created in my old Pioneer DVD-recorder. It seems like the Panasonic recorder either writes something special to the disc or uses a different file system for this. I have tried with two different types of DVD-RW discs, have tried formatting the disc again in the Panasonic recorder and I am 100% sure that the disc is finalized (using the Copy & Finalize function in the recorder).

Is this a know issue?
Would I maybe be better off by using DVD+RW discs?

Any tips are welcome.
Thanks and regards, Stig

[jman98]

I was going to say that maybe you didn't finalize them, but you seem sure that you have done that. Yeah, try +RW discs. My father has a Toshiba DVD recorder and these work a lot more reliably for him than -RW. By the way, Verbatim is the ONLY maker of reliable DVD+/-RW discs, so be sure you are only using Verbatim discs. Using other brands could be part of your problem. I seem to recall that we've had posts where some recorders are very fussy about what media they use, so if you get a post that says that your recorder works best with another brand of media, you probably should follow that. In general Verbatim works best on most recorders.

[stigj]

Many thanks for the reply. I have been using Memorex and Panasonic DVD-RW discs. I will buy some Verbatim DVD+RW discs and try that out.

Thanks again, Stig

[jman98]

Memorex DVD blanks of all types are consistently terrible quality. Some have referred to them as "landfill grade" to illustrate how bad they are. I don't know about Panasonic, but definitely avoid Memorex in the future.