New DVD Burner Woes...
 

Since you all seem to be the most knowledgable and helpful group I've found I thought I'd detail some of my problems here in the hopes ya'll might be able to help...

I used Avid Express Pro to build a sequence... just some boring home video... output that to Sorensen Squeeze... output from there using the DVD template to one MPV and one PCM WAV file... pulled that successfully into Sonic MyDVD... used Sonic's default title screen (just changed the text) as a simple menu... used Sonic's totally unconfigurable Big Red Burn Button to burn it to a Sony DVD+R (1x-4x) blank disc using a Philips SDVD6004 (Dell Inspiron internal 4x DVD burner).

The disc will play on PCs but not on my Toshiba SD-1700 set-top player.

My goal is to create DVD's that will play on the widest range of set-tops, not just PCs, so I used MyDVD to create an image set of folders and files so I could use Nero 5.5 to burn it instead... I chose Nero's UDF/ISO template and kept everything default... same thing... the disc will play fine on a PC but not on my Toshiba. The only funny thing I noticed was that Nero wouldn't let me burn it at any speed other than 2.4x. Dont know what Sonic burned it at because there's no information next to the Big Red Burn Button :-)

Any suggestions? I have yet to try to play the DVD on other set-tops, but since I've never had a problem playing rental DVDs on my Toshiba I am guessing that the problem is something further up the food chain... like the file structure MyDVD uses... or the settings in Nero... or the media itself... maybe my drive can't burn at 4x on this particular Sony media? Or my Toshiba can't play discs that were burned at 2.4x?

Any help or suggestions at all would be appreciated. This DVD stuff has way too many variables right now... hopefully it'll get all flattened out and simplified one day... maybe just in time to start playing with the next cool storage media format that comes along :-)

Thanks!
Darren

Have you ever burned a DVD that has worked on that set top player?

You need to test the DVD on another set top.

The media will affect how fast you can burn the disk. You can't burn every disk at the maximum speed.

Most likely it is due to using DVD+R instead of DVD-R. DVD-R is far more compatible than DVD+R ... ie. more DVD players will play DVD-R over DVD+R.

V