My DVD player finally died after about 4 years. It was the 2nd one I owned. The first one only lasted about a year-and-a-half.
Anyway, I bought a new one (a Sony progressive scan 5-disk changer . . . a decent "middle of the road" model for about $130). After I watched a couple of movies I decided to try something. I have a DVD copy of NUDE ON THE MOON (another classic from "Something Weird Video"). I owned this DVD for about 6 months before I tried to watch it. Much to my dismay, it didn't work! The DVD appeared to be completely blank . . . I couldn't even get to the on-screen menu . . . just a blank TV screen and "13:00" flashing on and off on my DVD player's LED. I no longer had the receipt, so I didn't try to return it. But I didn't throw it away either. I decided to try it in my new DVD player, and, lo and behold, it worked! I felt like I got a bonus (okay, so maybe NUDE ON THE MOON isn't much of a bonus, BUT . . . )
Have any of you ever encountered this strange "doesn't work in one player, but works in another" phenomenon? (By the way, BOTH DVD players were Sonys).
Post Edited (12-01-04 19:10)
The Burgomaster wrote:
> Have any of you ever encountered this strange "doesn't work in
> one player, but works in another" phenomenon? (By the way,
> BOTH DVD players were Sonys).
Yeah, it's a compatibility issue. Probably the NUDE ON THE MOON disc is a DVD-R or similar format and your first player couldn't read it. I had the same problem with my first player, a crappy GE. It was always rejecting discs that I can play without a problem on both my subsequent players (a Pioneer and a JVC), which will play anything. I could probably throw a coaster in there and something would come up.
I like the Toshiba players. Never had a problim with a pro disc, and few DvD-R's.
How common is VCD compatibility in DVD players? A guy I know bought a couple movies on VCD, thinking they were DVDs, and his player wouldn't play them. The woman who lived downstairs for a while got a DVD player a year or two ago and while looking in the manual to help her with it, I noticed that it didn't list VCD as one of the formats it would play either.
Do they do this to try and keep people from buying movies from other countries, like China, where VCDs are more popular?
JohnL,
A lot of DVD players will not play a VCD. This was the case with my Playstation 2. I also own a cheap Apex DVD player that plays them fine. I do "obtain" films in a way that allows me to view them on a VCD.
The only problem is that if a film is about 600-700megs in size then it has to be put on two seperate VCDs. Then there is also the problem on conversion. If the video file is originaly Divx or Xvid, then you must change the codecs to MPEG or AVI. This can create problems being as CC changers can sometimes damage the files.
Whew.
Also, VCDs are not that great of quality in most cases. It's certainly not DVD quality. That's why now you'll notice that some DVD players are showing as being Divx or Xvid players as well. Just burn your video file to a cd as a regular data cd and pop it in and enjoy the DVD quality.
JohnL wrote:
> How common is VCD compatibility in DVD players?
Most higher end players will play VCDs and SVCDs. A good resource to check your player's compatibility is here:
>Also, VCDs are not that great of quality in most cases. It's certainly not DVD
>quality. That's why now you'll notice that some DVD players are showing as
>being Divx or Xvid players as well. Just burn your video file to a cd as a regular
>data cd and pop it in and enjoy the DVD quality.
I'm not a big fan of DivX. It's great when it works properly, however often that's not the case. They keep changing the codec and introducing new features that break compatibility with older versions. Even if they don't, DivX videos often have audio sync problems (probably related to how it was encoded, but it still seems to happen more with DivX than any other format) and I've seen people in the forums complain that videos have to be encoded a certain way and to certain specs in order for the DVD players to play them. Going by what's been posted, it's far from just being any to copy any DIvX file to a disc and have the DVD player play it.
Not to mention that the codec download for Windows is now over 7MB because they force you to download their player and the Google Toolbar along with it. 7MB for a piece of code that's probably closer to 700K. It took a couple of weeks of pestering them, and one closed/locked thread before someone at the site finally admitted that the real reason for including the Google Toolbar was that Google pays them for it, and not just because they thought it was something everyone should have, as they first claimed. BLECH!
>Most higher end players will play VCDs and SVCDs. A good resource to check
>your player's compatibility is here:
>
>http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers
Thanks for the link.
I have a problem with some of the major companies DVD because my Apex DVD player is ran through my little Sylvania TV/VCR combo. Warner Bros and Paramonts DVD's tend to "roll."