DVD Player Acceptance of DVD-A gen'ed DVD-R

gold wrote on 4/28/2003, 1:42 PM
I dearly wanted the Dolby compression to put more on the dvd than was possible with PCM sound. However, I've noted an increase in the failure of DVD players being able to play the DVD's. I had some problems before with older model (over a year old) dvd players but now its worse (I was getting glitches near the end of a 4.7 GB dvd; now I get total lockup at about 45% down). The dvd's play great on newer dvd player's in computers. Getting a new dvd drive for a computer is no problem; getting one for a dvd standalone that you paid $400 or so for may be a problem--I don't know that's one of my questions--has any one retrofitted a standalone player? If so is there a source for replacement drives? Also are there other issues that can improve playability; I know brand name is important--I always avoid generics and get Verbatim, but even these seem to have problems on older drives with DVD-A generated disks--could this be related to the less than 1GB per vob issue?
Its obviously a density thing between inner and outer tracks.
Special request: please, please, please don't turn this into a debate--just technical info and not criticisms, thanks, thanks, thanks

Comments

swattum wrote on 4/29/2003, 1:29 PM
My suggestion would be to start by getting a new burner. The symptoms you describe could be attributed to your burner having trouble burning correctly as it heads to the outer edge of the DVD. Newer players may be able to tolerate this better, either because the tolerance range has been explicitly expanded, or because the mechanical parts are newer (and not coated with dust) and so they still have the ability to respond to tolerance issues in a timely fashion.

Not sure what options might be available for standalone older players if that's really where the issue is.
gold wrote on 4/29/2003, 1:49 PM
This is a Pioneer 104 burner. However, I have a Toshiba 2455-S305 laptop with burner. I've never tried burning a dvd with it; that would be a way to verify your hypothesis. I also have several dvd burners on other computers. I will have to check with Sonic Foundry to see if I can move the software to another machine to perform this test though, so this may not be an acceptable approach. Since the lockup problem only occurs with dvd's generated with DVD-A, I'm hopeful that version 1C may be the Holy Grail. Does anyone know exactly what Sonic Foundry is changing in 1C; is it VOB length, video/audio encoding algorithm/codec, burning code, etc?
swattum wrote on 4/29/2003, 5:35 PM
So you've tried other burning software and didn't have this problem? If that's the case, then I think it's safe to ignore the actual burner as being the source of the problem.
gold wrote on 4/30/2003, 9:55 AM
I'll wait a few days for 1C then. thanks. I have some more dvd's to burn this weekend maybe they'll release it Fri.
gold wrote on 5/5/2003, 1:24 PM
The conclusion I reached was that it definitely was the brand of dvd-r's that I was using and not software or hardware related as far as burning. I still would like to know if anyone has replaced a dvd driver in a stand-alone player. It would be nice to replace only the drive and preserve part of your original investment. My main question are stand-alone drives different from IDE computer drives?
john-beale wrote on 5/6/2003, 4:54 PM
I'm pretty sure that at least the earlier generation of stand-alones did use custom made drives. For one thing, Computer IDE-type DVD-ROM drives often go faster than 2x read speed (and can also be mechanically / acoustically noisy). The standalone units read only fast enough to play the DVD normally, and are often more quiet.

I used to have an Afreey LD-2060, a little known brand which did use what appears to be a standard IDE drive internally. See for example http://www.area450.com/thesampozone/players/dve560ownersview.htm

several people have reported success plugging in a different IDE DVD drive to this model player. I tried it myself on my own LD2060 with two different IDE-DVD drives and it was unable to read any disc, although the drives worked fine in my PC. Maybe other people were using units with newer or older firmware? ANyway it's an unsupported hack, so your milage may vary.
john-beale wrote on 5/6/2003, 5:05 PM
If you own a Sampo DVE360, DVE520, DVE560, DVE660 or clone of these DVD players from Sharp/Black Diamon/Digitron/Encore/Tokai/etc. (there are many, see http://www.area450.com/thesampozone/players.htm ) then you can try subsituting in a different IDE DVD drive unit into your player with some chance of success.

The IDE drives people have tried, and their results are listed here:
http://www.area450.com/thesampozone/articles/recommendeddrives.htm