I have three DVD players here now:
Sony DVP-NS315B -- It advertises DVD-R and DVD+RW compatiblity on the box.
APEX AD-1500 -- often claimed to "play anything with a hole it"
It certainly is very good for VCD and SVCD.
Zenith DVD2381 -- progressive scan, a useless feature for most people but the kind of thing salesmen then to push to sell something other than the cheapest player.
This is my wife's player. It was choosen over arguably better players because it has a 2X zoom that doesn't overlay anything on the screen (she hates the "band-aid view" of widescreen letterbox, an outstanding fast-forward/reverse using a jog dial with 2-100X zoom, and a remote with distinctive enough buttons and arrangement that it can be manipulated in a room too dark to read in by touch alone.
All three players work great on commercially pressed DVDs. If you want to argue picture quality, go at it, all three are definitely good enough for me, I'll stay out of it.
Back in October I tried the Pioneer A03 DVD-R burner. In summary I've found 7 of 32 players played my "best" DVD-R glitch free. Only 3 players rejected DVD-R with "disk error" or whatever.
There were two instances of nominally the same player, one from Sharp, the other JVC, where one player was glitch free, the other was not.
I want to make it clear that these glitches are not mosquito noise, block noise, or other mpeg2 encoding artifacts -- which aren't hard to find with any of the DVD authoring packages I've tried or Time-Warner digital cable channels or DirectTV broadcasts for that matter, so I'm not being overly critical.
The glitches I'm talking about are either a video mosaic breakup where some or all of the image breaks up into large blocks with colors unrelated to the adjacent video or a freeze-frame. The only way to miss them would be to not be looking at the screen, although most of the freeze-frames and a few of the mosaics cause the audio to dropout or "buzz" so you could detect these while in a another room if familar with the source material. I'm not talking about something subtle here.
People who watch a lot of DirectTV during rainstorms might think this is a normal part of the digital experience based on my experience with DirectTV while at the Radison Hotel in Portland, OR.
If I can watch 30 minutes of glitch free video on a burned disk I'm willing to call that player compatible.
Bear with me, the background info is finished, this is where it gets really intresting!
My "best" DVD-R result from October is a Meritline "noname" disk authored with Ulead DVD Movie Factory Trial. FF/REV and chapter navigation work correctly on all three of the above players. It plays glitch free on the Sony, has a repeatable video mosaic break up at ~20:35 on the Apex, and freeze-frames on the Zenith despite playing smoothly thru the 20:00 thru 21:00 section where the Apex glitches.
You can explain this result as: "non-compliant authoring and the Sony has forgiving playback" if you like.
Next I authored a DVD+R using an Ikebana external 1394 DVD+RW/R burner on HP DVD+R blank, 1hr 40 minutes of mpeg captured with ADS InstantDVD at 4000 Mbps. I made chapter points ~20 minutes apart with Ulead MSP6.5 DVD plugin and let the plugin burn the disk. This disk plays glitch free in all three players! FF/REV and chapter navigation also works correctly on all three.
You can explain this as: "Ulead has patched its DVD authoring several times since October" if you like.
I then copied the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders from the DVD-R to my hard drive using windows drag and drop. It seemed to play fine with PowerDVD although I did only a superficial playback test -- I do have only a finite amount of time to waste playing with this stuff. Computer playback of burned disks is not important to me, playback in standalone players is what I care about.
Next I used Nero 5.5.9.0 to "author" a DVD+R using the files from the DVD-R that I had copied to the hard drive. I choose "DVD Video" as the project type and dragged the contents of the VIDEO_TS directory to the VIDEO_TS folder in the Nero disk contents pane, changed the disk label to something more helpfull than "NEW" and burned the HP DVD+R blank at its 2.4X maximum.
I played back this DVD+R "copy" of the DVD-R in my Apex. Played fine but had the video mosiac glitch at ~20:35 same as the DVD-R!!! Didn't see any additional glitches in my 30 minute test. FF/REV and chapter nav worked as expected.
Put this DVD+R in the Sony which played it back glitch free with working FF/REV and chapter nav, same as the DVD-R "original".
Finally played this DVD+R in the Zenith, like the DVD-R it was copied from, no glitch at ~20:35, but what amazed me was no freeze-frame glitches during ~ 50 minutes of viewing! FF/REV and chapter have worked as expected.
Draw your own conclusions, but I think that the whole format war is a distraction to cover the fact that compatiblity of burned disks in existing players is just not very good!
Jerry Jones sent me a DVD-R authored with Ulead DVD Workshop. It played glitch free on my Apex and Sony, but freeze-framed badly on the Zenith. I may copy it to DVD+R next and see what happens.
[UPDATE, 9JUL02]
The DVD+R copy of Jerry's DVD Workshop authored DVD-R played perfectly in all three players. The original DVD-R freezed framed to the point of being unwatchable on the Zenith.
[end update]
So far, DVD+R seems "better" for the players I have on hand now, but I'm not willing at this point to claim its better or worse than DVD-R for the random players your audiance might have chosen to buy.
If you have a "compatible" player either format will make you very happy!
--wally.
Sony DVP-NS315B -- It advertises DVD-R and DVD+RW compatiblity on the box.
APEX AD-1500 -- often claimed to "play anything with a hole it"
It certainly is very good for VCD and SVCD.
Zenith DVD2381 -- progressive scan, a useless feature for most people but the kind of thing salesmen then to push to sell something other than the cheapest player.
This is my wife's player. It was choosen over arguably better players because it has a 2X zoom that doesn't overlay anything on the screen (she hates the "band-aid view" of widescreen letterbox, an outstanding fast-forward/reverse using a jog dial with 2-100X zoom, and a remote with distinctive enough buttons and arrangement that it can be manipulated in a room too dark to read in by touch alone.
All three players work great on commercially pressed DVDs. If you want to argue picture quality, go at it, all three are definitely good enough for me, I'll stay out of it.
Back in October I tried the Pioneer A03 DVD-R burner. In summary I've found 7 of 32 players played my "best" DVD-R glitch free. Only 3 players rejected DVD-R with "disk error" or whatever.
There were two instances of nominally the same player, one from Sharp, the other JVC, where one player was glitch free, the other was not.
I want to make it clear that these glitches are not mosquito noise, block noise, or other mpeg2 encoding artifacts -- which aren't hard to find with any of the DVD authoring packages I've tried or Time-Warner digital cable channels or DirectTV broadcasts for that matter, so I'm not being overly critical.
The glitches I'm talking about are either a video mosaic breakup where some or all of the image breaks up into large blocks with colors unrelated to the adjacent video or a freeze-frame. The only way to miss them would be to not be looking at the screen, although most of the freeze-frames and a few of the mosaics cause the audio to dropout or "buzz" so you could detect these while in a another room if familar with the source material. I'm not talking about something subtle here.
People who watch a lot of DirectTV during rainstorms might think this is a normal part of the digital experience based on my experience with DirectTV while at the Radison Hotel in Portland, OR.
If I can watch 30 minutes of glitch free video on a burned disk I'm willing to call that player compatible.
Bear with me, the background info is finished, this is where it gets really intresting!
My "best" DVD-R result from October is a Meritline "noname" disk authored with Ulead DVD Movie Factory Trial. FF/REV and chapter navigation work correctly on all three of the above players. It plays glitch free on the Sony, has a repeatable video mosaic break up at ~20:35 on the Apex, and freeze-frames on the Zenith despite playing smoothly thru the 20:00 thru 21:00 section where the Apex glitches.
You can explain this result as: "non-compliant authoring and the Sony has forgiving playback" if you like.
Next I authored a DVD+R using an Ikebana external 1394 DVD+RW/R burner on HP DVD+R blank, 1hr 40 minutes of mpeg captured with ADS InstantDVD at 4000 Mbps. I made chapter points ~20 minutes apart with Ulead MSP6.5 DVD plugin and let the plugin burn the disk. This disk plays glitch free in all three players! FF/REV and chapter navigation also works correctly on all three.
You can explain this as: "Ulead has patched its DVD authoring several times since October" if you like.
I then copied the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders from the DVD-R to my hard drive using windows drag and drop. It seemed to play fine with PowerDVD although I did only a superficial playback test -- I do have only a finite amount of time to waste playing with this stuff. Computer playback of burned disks is not important to me, playback in standalone players is what I care about.
Next I used Nero 5.5.9.0 to "author" a DVD+R using the files from the DVD-R that I had copied to the hard drive. I choose "DVD Video" as the project type and dragged the contents of the VIDEO_TS directory to the VIDEO_TS folder in the Nero disk contents pane, changed the disk label to something more helpfull than "NEW" and burned the HP DVD+R blank at its 2.4X maximum.
I played back this DVD+R "copy" of the DVD-R in my Apex. Played fine but had the video mosiac glitch at ~20:35 same as the DVD-R!!! Didn't see any additional glitches in my 30 minute test. FF/REV and chapter nav worked as expected.
Put this DVD+R in the Sony which played it back glitch free with working FF/REV and chapter nav, same as the DVD-R "original".
Finally played this DVD+R in the Zenith, like the DVD-R it was copied from, no glitch at ~20:35, but what amazed me was no freeze-frame glitches during ~ 50 minutes of viewing! FF/REV and chapter have worked as expected.
Draw your own conclusions, but I think that the whole format war is a distraction to cover the fact that compatiblity of burned disks in existing players is just not very good!
Jerry Jones sent me a DVD-R authored with Ulead DVD Workshop. It played glitch free on my Apex and Sony, but freeze-framed badly on the Zenith. I may copy it to DVD+R next and see what happens.
[UPDATE, 9JUL02]
The DVD+R copy of Jerry's DVD Workshop authored DVD-R played perfectly in all three players. The original DVD-R freezed framed to the point of being unwatchable on the Zenith.
[end update]
So far, DVD+R seems "better" for the players I have on hand now, but I'm not willing at this point to claim its better or worse than DVD-R for the random players your audiance might have chosen to buy.
If you have a "compatible" player either format will make you very happy!
--wally.
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