Menu selection gets lost, any ideas?

farss wrote on 12/19/2003, 2:33 PM
Made several copies of a DVD for client. Has a 5 minute looping menu background and several menu buttons at the bottom of the screen. DVDs will be used in kiosks.
Burnt to -R media at 2X and plays fine on several players EXCEPT the ones the client has bought for the kiosks. Plays on them except when you select one of the menu options screen goes black for 30 seconds and then player goes back to main menu and plays on.

The menu options highlight correclty so it's not the PAL menu highlight problem, I've downloaded the patch and will try that just in case and I'll try buring at 1X and +R media to boot. Normally I'd just shrug my shoulders but this client wants initially 100s of copies and then 1000s so there's a few dollars in this.

He's going to to drop one of the players over later today for me to test on so I may have a better description of the problem then. These are incredibly cheap players although sold through a reputable business. I'm suspecting the player amd would feel much happier if he bought a slightly more expensive player and tested it with the DVD beforehand. He needs aroud 100 players so I'm certain he could cut a good deal no matter what brand he buys.

Comments

kameronj wrote on 12/19/2003, 2:46 PM
I'm thinking the player too.
farss wrote on 12/19/2003, 9:51 PM
Just got my hands on one of te DVD players.
Seems that the problem may relate to it being too smart.
With this machine you can create you own scene selection sequences, including random play. I can actually get it to play the scenes from the selection menu but not via the scene selection menu on the DVD but via the players scene selection menu. When I select the DVD's scene selection menu I get about 20 secs of black screen and then it goes back to the menu.

If via the menu I select another video clip then it plays that but only after about 10 seconds. Very strange machine.

Good news is the client pretty much convinced himself to return the machines and get a different model / brand.

Thing that really amazed me was I got him to ring around the local suppliers to see what sort of deal they'd cut him on supply of 400 units, I'd have thought the salepeople would be falling over themselves, but typically they'd knock $10 off!

Maybe margins are paper thin or retailers aren't interested in shifting big stock volumes, I just don't understand the mentality either way.
farss wrote on 12/20/2003, 5:27 PM
Problem just got even stranger, it works fine burnt onto DVD+RW but not -R or +R, so it's not a DVD firmware issue.
farss wrote on 12/21/2003, 4:38 AM
The PAL menu bugfix fixed the scene selection issue, I suspect the raiming issues are due to just a very cheap DVD player. Pity the client bought six of them.

He bought a different brand, same price and the salesman assured him it would play burnt DVDs but it performed flawlessly even without the bugfix, go figure that out.