Playing a dvd

[Ice9]

I've used nothing but Plextor (dvd, cd-rw and dvd-rw) for the last few years and never had a single problem with any of those drives.

[Tux]

The majority of the time choosing the right media is crucial to success with dvd-r's. The drives are far more finicky than their cd-r brethren. I find http://www.videohelp.com/dvdmedia a good place to check compatible media for particular drive/firmware combinations. My NEC ND-2510A for example, very much likes Datawrite yellow DVD+R's.

[Void Main]

Nice link. Thanks!

[worker201]

For everything you could ever possibly want to know about optical discs, especially CDR, check this page out:
http://www.cdrfaq.org/

[Linux Frank]

Nice links.

By browsing them and a lot more stuff, I think I have narrowed down the exact problem. My DVD drive was I believe manufactured before the DVD+R spec was out. I do not think my DVD player can read DVD+ formats (and I'm suspicious that it has problems with DVD- as well but that will soon be a mute issue), and as you might have guessed that is the very format the disc is burnt in.

By the way Void Goggles is a great replacement for the Ogle Gui. I have a few minor issues, but I think it is better than the original it replaces. At least the stop button appears to work on this one

For a quick summary there appear to be 6 formats for DVD.

1. DVD-ROM this is the maunfactured DVD that you buy from the stores. Every DVD player can read this format, but it is not a home burnable format.

2. DVD-RAM This is the expensive burn solution, boasting rewrite capabilities of 100,000 times. Designed for data storage and backup purposes, it is not optimised to read analogue playback. In theory every DVD player can read this format. However the disks are expensive. I believe this uses a sectoring physical format, as opposed to the grooves used by ROM. The disk can be formated and mounted with say EXT3 so it is more like a removable filesystem.

3. DVD-R this is the next burnable format to be released, and is prefered and recommended by the DVD forum as a standard. It is single writable and I believe it is grooved not sectored. Acts like a normal DVD-ROM. I understand that this format is the most likely to be cross compatible if you are burning a video DVD.

4. DVD-RW this is the next format to be developed, and is basically a Rewritable version of DVD-R.

5. DVD+RW is rather out of line, I believe this format was released before the +R version. It is the format prefered by the industry, but not DVD forum.

6. DVD+R the last DVD format 'standard' which is also the least likely to be readable. If you have a DVD burnt in this format it may not be readable in newer DVD players. Which I think is my problem. This is single burnable only.

I am led to understand that the primary difference between DVD- and DVD+ is the reflectivity of the Disc. DVD+ uses a much tighter spec. So older players may not recognize a burnt disc because the drive is not optimized. Time to clean the laser mayber , ha ha ha , oh dear need the medication.

[worker201]

Excellent. I have been using DVD-R purely by accident. And the discs seem to be majorly portable.

So this sounds like a big scam to divorce consumers from their money. While the DVD Group probably meant well at the beginning, the MPAA, the hardware people, and the retail industry have, as they always do, reduced fantastic technology to a profit matrix. And we pay for it, in time and money. That's why Linux is so great, by the way - it takes the tech power out of their hands and puts it into ours.

[Linux Frank]

And yes, I was correct. I now have the DVD working properly under my Linux system. Must remeber to burn copies in DVD-R. Well I learnt a lot from this. Including the fact that Linux is still the most adaptable, flexible and damn good OS anywhere.