Oh dear. Another EX75 newbie problem

[AL S]

Why won't my Sony +RW, -R, and +R (all the types I have in fact) discs play in my new Panasonic EX75 when they will in my old Toshiba SD 420 and in two laptops I own?

EX75 Drive tells me No Disc or offers me the chance to format.

Is this to do with "finalisation"? How can I finalise something already recorded?

 

[AL S]

Correction. The DVD-Rs do play in the EX75, but not the DVD+RWs (Sony brand.)

I was also mistaken in saying the +RWs played on both my laptops - they play on my old Toshiba laptop fine and in my old Toshiba 420 DVD player, but they won't play in the new EX75, nor in my new Sony Vaio laptop...

I get messages telling me no disc, not a DVD disc, or video_ts/video_ts.ifo does not exist.

The DVD-Rs will play in the new laptop - but not with WinDVD.

Why is this DVD recording lark so difficult!

 

[Gavtech]

Correction. The DVD-Rs do play in the EX75, but not the DVD+RWs (Sony brand.)

I was also mistaken in saying the +RWs played on both my laptops - they play on my old Toshiba laptop fine and in my old Toshiba 420 DVD player, but they won't play in the new EX75, nor in my new Sony Vaio laptop...

I get messages telling me no disc, not a DVD disc, or video_ts/video_ts.ifo does not exist.

The DVD-Rs will play in the new laptop - but not with WinDVD.

Why is this DVD recording lark so difficult!

The answer is in the messages you get.

When a disk is inserted into a machine it goes through an initialisation procedure to identify the type of disk and its contents.

One failure mode of this procedure is if the disk cannot be read by the laser, which can occur because either the disk is dirty , damaged, or incompatible.

The remaining failure mode occurs if the content of the disk is not in a form that can be recognised.

The machine is obviously looking for the TS information file [ *.ifo ] and cannot find it for one of the reasons above.

It may be that the disks are not finalised [ which would generate such a file] That has to be done on the machine on which the recordings were made.

 

[AL S]

Thanks - I thought it was something like that.

I seemed to solve it by ripping the DVD +RWs and re-recording them on -Rs. The DVD+RWs I can now format on the EX75 and they record and play in the recorder and in the laptop (though I haven't tried burning to them in the laptop yet.)

Another thing that might have solved it - not sure - is that I found the DVD +RWs didn't have names according to the EX75, so when I ripped I made sure they had names and weren't just called DVD 2.06.06 or whatever.

I confess to being surprised that not only are there diferent formats of discs, but that different machines have specific preferences too - seems to make it very hit and miss whether a DVD from a friend's machine will play in mine, or vice versa?

 

[Gavtech]

I confess to being surprised that not only are there diferent formats of discs, but that different machines have specific preferences too - seems to make it very hit and miss whether a DVD from a friend's machine will play in mine, or vice versa?

Yes - It's true.

Each type of player has it's own list of disk type support... always worth checking so you know where you are.

Generally speaking, dubbing to DVD-R is the safest bet as these have the widest support - by far.