Can I make DVD's using this DVD burner that will play in my DVD player?

[Hulk]

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=LFD-311

This is a Panasonic DVD burner with some included software.

I'm really not up to date on the latest DVD format wars and was wondering if I could, using this drive, the included software, and MS Pro 6.5 make DVD's that would play on my DVD player. Or any DVD players for that matter.

The price on this unit seems pretty good.

I would like to get some opinions from those who know before recklessly plowing ahead.

Thanks,

Mark

[Patrick]

Better talk to Wally. He's done a lot of testing with various playback units and found out that many, if not most stand alone DVD players will not correctly play back VCDs, DVDs, etc that have been burned on a computer. I just picked up a Pioneer DV343 for $219(Cdn) that's supposed to be able to handle (without glitches) every format except for MP3s.

[wkulecz]

IF you are willing to buy a player to play your DVD-R disks you will be very happy once you throw away the bundled software (except Prassi) and use the Ulead DVD Plugin or DVD Factory. The quality of the mpeg2 produced by the bundled software from DV source was so poor one might was well simply make VHS tapes.


Pioneer DV-343 was the cheapest player I could find that played the DVD-R glitch free and had properly working FF/REV and chapter navigation. Unfortunately it had bad SVCD playback which didn't bother me. YMMV

Don't count on the compatability lists you see, as in my experience if the player doesn't spit out the disk, it gets on these lists. 90% of the players out there do accept the DVD-R and start playing them back, but unless you ignore video mosaic or freez-frame glitches, broken FF/REV and/or broken chapter navigation you are down to more like 20% mostly models from Pioneer, Panasonic, and Sony. If you only quickly test FF/REV and chapter navigation and watch for less than five minutes you'll get many false positive "works fine".

I've found making "image" files with the authoring software and burning them with Prassi is the most trouble free. I've made no coasters, but the DVD authoring softwares trigger unhelpful error messages when I tried to burn from them. I never bothered trying to troubleshoot this part of it, as compatability wasn't good enough for my needs, so I've returned both the Pioneer A03 and HP DVD100i.

See the gory details as it developed in some threads from the first weeks of October.

--wally.

[Patrick]

Geez, there's always something, isn't there?

Unfortunately it (Pioneer DV-343) had bad SVCD playback...

Hmmm, I didn't realize this deck had a problem with SVCDs. I'm not even sure I want to burn SVCDs (as opposed to VCDs), but I would like to have that option. Luckily I have 15 days to return this deck if I don't want to keep it, so I guess I'll have to make a decision concerning SVCD playback ability and whether or not it's important to me.

[wkulecz]

IF SVCD is important to you, best to test it soon. I've not made but a couple of SVCDs -- I found compatability way to iffy to bother with, but my test disk encoded with TMPGEnc SVCD template and burned with Nero 5.5 has looked pretty decent (better than VCD) on what players would accept it until I tried the DV-343. Playback was horrible -- almost like interlace was wrong, this is the only player I've tried that accepted the disk but delivered unacceptable playback. FF/REV and chapter navigation is a whole 'nother issue on VCD and SVCD, largely the reason I quickly gave up on VCD and SVCD :-(

--wally.

[wkulecz]

I'd advise against buying from computer geeks!

Check: www.resellerratings.com

I had bad experience with them, sending broken stuff, accepting a return for exchange and shipping back the same broken thing claiming it "works fine"! My credit card company came thru for me and refunded my money, but I'll never buy anything from these guys again!

--wally.


PS I've seen reports that the Panasonic burning DVD-R works on some players my Pioneer A03 DVD-R clearly didn't. Either they only tested superfically, or the Panasonic burns differently and/or had working software bundled. It IS differnet hardware, it only burns DVD-R at 1X where the A03 does 2X. There is an ad from CompUSA selling the Que internal IDE version of the Panasonic for $350 after $50 rebate. CompUSA is not my favorite store, but they are way better than Computer Geeks!