Verbatim DVD-R's
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Who made the batch you bought for Verbatim? Check with DVDIdentifyer.

John

Thanks for the idea, I downloaded the DVD identifier program and it told me the following:
Disk & Book Type - DVD-R
Manufacturer - Mitsubishi Chemical Corp.
Manufacturer ID - MCC 01RG20
It could not tell me the Media type ID, Product Reversion or Balnk Disc Capacity.

It tried it on a Sony DVD+RW and it told me everything.

I tried Sr_C's idea of using a Sony DVD+RW and it worked on everything I've tried so far. I'm going to take it to a friend's house and try it on his player and his PS2. If it works on that tempermental thing it would work on anything. Also, I'll try a wider base by burning on some other brands and +/- to see if this is really the issue. However, will some players only play -R or +R and will some not play RW's regardless or the +/- issue? I'll post whatever results I may have hopefully by tonight. Thank you all again for your advice.

Lots of players look at the booktype on the DVD to determine what they will or won't play. Older players frequently will only play DVDs with a booktype of DVD-ROM, then when -R media came out players started getting made to look for DVD-ROM or -R, and then when +R came out the same thing, and again with +R DL

So far I've not encountered a player that wouldn't play +R (SL or DL) with a booktype of DVD-ROM. In your case though, it does sound like there may be something more going on with the media. I've had good luck with Ritek and lately with Taiyo Yuden.

MCC 01RG20
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That is the media ID. It is generally very reliable as you can see here.
If you are burning at 4x, try burning at 1x. I go no more than 2x with any media and never get a returned disc. Also.....Do NOT FILL THE DISC. The biggest problems with re-writable media are in the outer edges where it fills up last. Don't try to cram 2 hours on media intended for 1 hour. Use two discs.

John

Two of the most common causes of disk failure are too high of a bit rate (usually seen in older players) and trying to burn at too high burn speed.

I never exceed 2x, always use Ritek -R and have never had a disk returned.

Yet.

Knock on wood.

JayH

I did buy both Memorex and Sony's DVD-R and DVD+R today. I haven't had time to burn any yet, I will try tomorrow. I took my Verbatim DVD-R to my friends house who has a 1997 Pioneer (DVD / Laserdisk) player. It would not read the -R from verbatim at all. I did however, read the Sony DVD+RW, but was very glitchy. Both were recorded at 4x though and with what might qualify for a high bit rate. I didn't know that high bit rate could cause problems with older machines. Please define "high" and what years (from 1996-....) you believe such "high" bit rates to be relevant. Also, his PS2 wouldn't play anything. I understand that the early versions of PS2 need a special driver file on the memory card in order to increase compatibility, and he does not have that on any memory cards, so that might make a difference. Also, I remembered today that my Verbatim DVD-R's (all up to now were burned @ 4x) will only work intermittantly on my DVD player and none work on my Computer's DVD player. I would say that in my Orion stand alone it works maybe 3 times out of 10 tries. On my computer - not at all. When I used Sony's DVD+RW (again at 4x) it works flawlessly on all my DVD players (including my computer) but very glitchy on my friends old Pioneer - it would play but was very jumpy - would that be due to the high bit rate issue? I'm sorry for the continued issues but it is imperative that I work through these quickly. It might help for you to know that my business does not depend on excellent movie quality but it must be relatively clear and crisp. At present, I max all my optimizations, dependent on file size, relative to the DVD. Thanks again for the help.

THe only thing that worked were the +R and +RW from Sony. I haven't tried Memorex's +R's yet. They even worked in my friend 1996 Pioneer once I slowed down the bit rate from 9.8 to 7.2. The thing that baffles me is that every web page and forum I've visited, tell me the complete opposite. They claim the highest compatability is with -R's. Why would I experience they exact opposite repeatedly? There is one flaw in my attempted test and that is the fact that my Sony DVD+R and the Sony DVD-R were not the same. The DVD+R were their regular variety and the -R's were their "colors" variety. I wonder whether the colors variety is of lesser quality. It wouldn't make sense but I grasping for straws here. Also, does anybody know anything about the compatibility of Sony's new AccuCORE DVD technology? I'm very interested, but I'm also getting rather low on funds to dump into DVD
s I may never use. Thanks for any feedback!

we noticed less compatability with AccuCORE so far -- but thats true of 16x disks in general ...

oddly enough - with mostly sony dvd players and recorders ..

Is that true only if you try to write at faster speeds? How about at 2x'x?

In General
If the DVD player is more than two-years old, it can't be relied on to play writeable DVD's.

All writeable DVD's contain errors. It's unavoidable. However, the error correction in the player almost always hides the errors from the viewer. Writing at slower speeds reduces the errors.

There is no magic, but since DVD players can be purchased new for under $50 ($35 at WalMart), there's really no excuse for keeping DVD players that were made before DVD-R was even in the lab, let alone a viable distribution media.

Steve Mann