DVD+R Question

numanoid

Hi folks, I hope someone has a quick answer to the following:

I recently bought a new PC with a DVD rewriter on it and uploaded a few home movies to burn onto DVD. I used DVD Santa to convert to a playable DVD but when I inserted it into my Toshiba DVD player nothing happened. I tried it in my daughter's machine (a Mitsubishi Black Diamond player) and it worked perfectly. Does anyone know if my Toshiba player just won't accept DVD+R's or is there something I can do to make it accept them? (I.e. use differebnt buring software or convert my home movies to a different type of file) or do I just have to go out and buy a compatible player?

I appreciate your advice in advance.

Boro

Its possible that your brand of DVD and the player itself are not compatible.
Go to www.videohelp.com and look up your player and the disc type there. You may find more info.

numanoid

Thanks Boro. Just after I posted I found the Toshiba helpline and they informed me that they use the DVD-R format whereas my Dell PC writes in DVD+R so they've confirmed the incompatibility. I'll have to buy a new player (or nick my daughter's).

Anyone wanna buy a Toshiba DVD/VCR combi?

mcummins2

Or you could change your DVD Writer to a +/-. Compustore are doing a 16x DVD +/- RW for around €70 and a box of HP DVD- Discs 10 for €10.
Martin.

Ciaran500

Are you sure you DVD writer only does +R media?

Tony H

first of all find out the brand name of your drive ,with some drives u can upgrade the firmware of the drive to burn dvd r+ as dvd rom which all drives can read ,

Inspector Gadget

fitzdragon's approach is called "bitsetting" - do a google. (Never got it to work myself, mind)

It changes the bits that tell the player what type of disc it is from reporting "DVD+R" or "DVD+RW" to "DVD-ROM" (i.e. a pressed disc). My dual-layer, dual-format Lite-On SOHW-832S is supposed to support it, but (as I say) never got it to work.

Gadget

dawballz

Bitsetting? Just flash the firmware..
www.rpc1.org

Inspector Gadget

Flashing the firmware is fine if you can get a firmware revision from a more feature-rich later-model drive that's compatible with yours; however, this can have unforeseen circumstances down the road (in the event that the hardware isn't as compatible as the it would initially seem)

Gadget

Mutant_Fruit

I was just gonna mention bitsetting (which is only supported by DVD+R i might add) as a good solution for your problem, and it looks like it'd work.

What DVD+R burner do you have? If you can tell us, then we'd be able to tell you whether you can use bitsetting or not. If you can't, you're screwed. If you can, you're sorted. This is exactly the kind of situation bitsetting was designed to handle.

Your DVD player is perfectly well able to handle +R discs, but they decided to limit it to DVD-R and DVD-Rom because they're *******.

dawballz

You can also make some dvd standalone players region free by entering in a few numbers on the remote control. Just do a google search for the make and model and maybe "region free" after it.. I did this to a Samsung standalone player and it works perfect.

numanoid

Thanks for all the advice folks. I have, belatedly discovered that the rewriter writes to both + and - and is a standard Philips DVD8631 (for Dell). I have read about bitsetting, so further info in that regard would be appreciated. The PC is brand new and I would be worried about downloading anything that might invalidate my warranty. Would flashing the firmware do this? I intend to buy some DVD-R's today to try my Toshiba player again.

I appreciate all the advice so far. This is my first DVD-Rewriter so all this is new to me. one last thing - Some of the stuff I have recorded so far seems to go out of sync with the voices on my home movies and then won't rectify itself. Does anyone know the cause of this and how to fix it?

Thanks again Numanoid

Tony H

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?releaseid=r89117&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19
here is a link to a dell firmware update for your drive ,
http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=92 a link to the philips forum
be sure to check out the forum BEFORE AND IF you decide to flash the drive
and because its an official firmware update it wont mess up your warrenty but if you can contact dell support BEFORE you flash

numanoid

Thanks Fitzdragon - I contacted Dell and they provided me with a link to an even more up-to-date frimware lash for the drive, which I have now done. All I have to do is test it properly now. Thanks again.