Unfinalised DVD-RW (VR) recorded on Sony will play on Panasonic

[Gavtech]

As title.

Intriguing piece of information that may be of use to someone:

I found today that an unfinalised DVD-RW recorded in VR mode on a Sony machine will play fine on a Panasonic machine.

However, in this state, the Panasonic can neither record any more onto the disc, nor finalise it.


I'll try the reverse sometime.. and other disc types/ modes, over time, and report results here if any are worthy of note.

[maldonian]

Hi Gavin

So you've been trying a Sony too, I wonder which one. Their user interface is very different to the Panny's - but that's another story.

I found today that an unfinalised DVD-RW recorded in VR mode on a Sony machine will play fine on a Panasonic machine.

Yes, in fact there's quite a strong mirroring of the way DVD-RAM discs and VR mode DVD-RW discs can be used in a Panasonic and a Sony. What follows is based on my experience of how they behave in a Panasonic EX75 and a Sony HXD890.

(1) The EX75 can read but not write to VR mode DVD-RW, and the 890 can read but not write to DVD-RAM.

(2) You can high speed copy HDD -> DVD-RAM and DVD-RAM -> HDD in the EX75, and you can high speed copy HDD -> DVD-RW(VR) and DVD-RW(VR) -> HDD in the 890.

(3) You can also high speed copy DVD-RW(VR) -> HDD in the EX75, and DVD-RAM -> HDD in the 890.

In other words, you can high speed copy from both types of disc to the HDD in both machines.

So you can transfer titles between the EX75 and 890 HDDs with no loss of quality by high speed copying from one HDD to a disc and then from the disc to the other HDD, using DVD-RAM in one direction (EX75 to 890) and DVD-RW(VR) in the other (890 to EX75).

There doesn't seem to be any obvious benefit in transfers from the 890 to the EX75, because the copied titles don't have their high speed copy flags set.

But there is a potential benefit going the other way because titles that have been transferred from the EX75 to the 890 can then be high speed copied to DVD-R in the 890, regardless of whether the original titles had their high speed copy flags set in the EX75. The 890 ignores the EX75's high speed copy flags. So the lossless transfer to the 890 provides a way of burning non-high-speed-copy titles from any Panny to DVD-R with no loss of quality, which could be quite useful if you've also got an 890 (or any Sony model that behaves in the same way) and you don't want to use a PC to do it.

[Gavtech]

Originally Posted by maldonian

Hi Gavin

So you've been trying a Sony too, I wonder which one. Their user interface is very different to the Panny's - but that's another story.

Hi Ian

' Very good to hear from you again.

It's also the Sony 890. I was driven to try it just out of interest because of the recent 'fell off the back of a lorry' prices.

Early impressions: Basically a sound and capable machine. Has some nice navigation refinements, which are slightly impaired by an unfriendly remote.
The lack of any serious playlist editing is an odd omission in a machine of such otherwise all-round capability.
The user interface is stylistically generally less clear.


Yesterday, I got as far as discovering that the Sony recording could be hi-speed dubbed to the Panasonic hard disc.
Not having attempted to do anything with it since , I had not yet discovered that the hi-speed flag was absent once there.

Your findings that it works when going the other way strikes me as potentially very useful indeed.


I had hoped that this would mean it would be possible to import to the SONY at high-speed via RAM, titles originated by DVD MovieAlbum on PC.

However, in the one test I have tried so far, it failed at the final hurdle, returning the message that it could not be transferred at high speed due to an 'Audio incompatibility, or some other problem'

I shall have to investigate further sometime to see if these restrictions can be overcome.