DVD Set Top Player Evils

craigbowman

craigbowman

Veteran
I finally got around to doing my first DVD authoring for a set top box with Adobe Encore. Seemed pretty straight forward, did the checks, ran the preview, burned the disc, popped it back into the computer and fired up one of the DVD player programs and everything worked great.

Then I try in my long time trusty Toshiba DVD player and it doesn't load properly. I get a "check disc" message. So figuring I must have missed a step or something, I go back and try reshuffling first play and a few other goodies, burn and test on another DVD software player on the computer, no problems. I take the disc back to the Toshiba player and same problem. Won't load.

I know I was an early adopter of DVD's over tape and so I go online and sure enough I discover that not only is my Toshiba player got a rash of known load issues with existing DVD authoring programs, but there is a huge slew of makes and models of set top players with errors and problems with all kinds of commercials DVD releases.

To verify it really was my machine as I suspected I went to a friend's place and tried it on his el cheapo DVD player and of course it worked like a charm.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh! Here we go again.

So much for standards! I don't mind so much that I have to get a newer set top player, but I decided to author to "standard set top" DVD because I didn't trust all of the computer configurations out there with interactive software.


If it was just that I had an outdated player, I don't think it would have fizzed much. Its seeing how many models have problems with different commercially released titles.

Anyone else run into this issue?
 
Sure. But it is a problem mostly with older units, the "early adopter" people. Fortunately, they are also a bit more tech-savvy and it is pretty easy to convince them to upgrade their old $600 DVD player with a new and better $50 unit. I put an explanation of the compatibility issue in my contract and inside every DVD I produce. I have good luck with -R disks from Ritek, bit densisty can also affect this problem some. You just have to find a combo that works for you and stick with it.
 
Some DVD players only Play DVD-R and some only DVD+R ...most decks will play both though.

Aaah, format wars...

Infact DVD-Rs will play in 91% of machine, asn DVD+Rs will play in 87% - so most will work in both, but it's still a (the biggest) possible issue to compatibilty.

- Mikko
 
Home-burned DVDs will never achieve 100% playability, simply because the dyes in them will not give you the super-precise pits that are stamped into commercial DVDs. They may improve somewhat still, but there will never be perfection.

Toshiba got hit with a class-action recently on its compatibility issues.

Though, incidentally, I have one of their earlier progressive-scan players, and it’s far and away the best of the DVD players I’ve owned, including a couple of newer, more expensive ones.
 
I feel for ya. I had a DVD burned at home and it played fine on two Panasonic DVD players, but the film festival organizers couldn't get it to play on their DVD player. What?? So the 8 others I sent probably won't play either. There goes $200 in festival fees.
 
will we encounter the same problem with the new HD dvd stuff? What is it called? Blue ray? and some other kind? Maybe we should start a protest now before they come out with this new stuff It really burns me that there can't be just one friggin format. I love the HP slogan "+ is all you need". - BULLSH*T !!!!!
 
I have a first generation Toshiba that won't play burned disks, either. It doesn't recognize them. I have a newer progressive scan Toshiba that will play anything I throw at it (including DVD-RW discs).
 
Yeha there will be HD-DVD (which will eb backwards compatible with DVD [a HD-DVD player ill play a regular DVD]) and then there will be blue ray, which is techincally superior, has more capacity, and is compleatly incompatible with anythign before it. NO prizes for guessing who came up with Blue ray.


- Mikko
 
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