Standalone dvd recorders - My disc will not play!

[Madrone]

Anyone know anything about this?

A co-worker has a dvd recorder that she used to tape the first Survivor episode on for me, as I do not have cable. I tried to watch it last night - nada.

I tried the 5disc Panasonic progressive scan player in the livingroom, I tried the cheap-o Apex in the bedroom, and I tried the dvd drive in the computer. Nothing can read the disc.

Is this normal, or did the woman record it wrong? She watched it - but she may have watched it on the recorder itself, and not the dvd player.

I'm stumped.

[Ready4Change]

1. Probably conflicting standards.

My understanding is that there is no one DVD writing standard. They are getting more compatibiltiy by having players that can read more and more standards. So, if your players are older, they probably can't read whatever standard was used to write the disc.

[Khephra]

2. Some set-top dvd recorders have to have the disk "finalized"

so that it can be played on other machines than the one that originally made the copy.

[Kellanved]

3. Some players do not create DVD compliant disks by default

They need to be set to "Video mode" or similar, if the recordings are intended for playback in normal DVD players. And maybe the disks have to be finalized manually (makes sense, as no more material can be added to a finalized disk- in order to work like a VCR the media isn't finalized ).

[judy]

4. Was it a RW or a R (read-write or a read only)?

I have heard that the format problems happen when you record on a RW disc. If you use a R, you can record only once on the disk, but you can play it on other players.