COMPATIBILITY

DVD:

Currently, there is no single standard for non-commercial DVD recordings. There are DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW – and most DVD players do not document which, if any, of these non-commercial formats they will read. For example, I can tell you I have given DVD’s to several friends to test on their PC’s with DVD players – and all have played successfully. The DVD will play on my Panasonic DMR-HS2, but will not play on a Sharp DV-L70. It will play on my Apex PD-10 portable player but it behaves peevishly… occasionally it will not recognize the disc or will skip or hiccup. If I play a different disc and then put my DVD-R back in, it seems to work fine.

The DVDs currently being shipped are recorded on generic (low-cost) DVD-R media. Even some DVD players that are ‘DVD-R compatible’ have problems playing various brands of DVD-R media. We offer DVDs on both the low-cost generic DVD-R and the higher cost Fuji DVD-R – the cost of the Fuju DVD will be about $1.50 more per disc. If you have doubts about the type of disc your player will accept, you may be ‘safer’ ordering the Fuji brand recording.

VCD:

Although VCD’s seem to have fewer compatibility issues, there are still a few problems due to incompatible media. For example, although my Sharp DV-L70 has VCD clearly embossed on the case, it will not play my VCD’s recorded on CD-R media.

To play a VCD on a PC, you must have a DVD or CD player or recorder. To take advantage of the menu structure on a VCD, you must have software such as a recent version of WinDVD or PowerDVD. How do you know if you have a compatible version? You probably don’t until you try to play a disc. If you want to use a media player, the disc won’t play automatically – you must browse to the MPEGAV folder, choose to display ALL files instead of all media files, and click on a .dat file to play. Don’t be misled by the ‘DVD’ in the program name. I downloaded a test version of PowerDVD to a PC that has only a CD player and it played a VCD just fine. This site has helpful info and links to software: http://www.dvvdrhelp.com/play.htm#vcd .

MPEG-1:

These are files ‘ripped’ from the DVD, but before they are converted to VCD. The three-character extension for these files is mpg – so, for example, Esme’s video in this format will be in a file named GIBSON.MPG. In this format, you can use Windows Media Player or any other MPEG-1 compliant software to play on your computer. I showed my display video from this disc at the office using RealOne Player and Windows Media Player. In the default display (about 4x5”, the picture was remarkable good. You can resize the display – but the large it gets, the grainier the quality. You can also use your own DVD or VCD creation software to burn these videos to discs in whatever format you choose.

Don’t know if you can play one of these files on your computer? Go to Participants and try to play one of the clips. If it works, you can play them.

As people try my discs out on their players, I hope they will report back the results and I will add them to this chart.

Player	DVD-R	VCD (recorded on CD-R media)	Reported By:
Apex PD-10	Plays erratically. Sometimes fails to recognize disc or skips. At other times the same disc plays flawlessly.	OK	Betty Cowin
Panasonic DMR-HS2	OK	OK	Betty Cowin
Panasonic W-528	OK	Not tested	Karen Andreas
PhIlips DVD Q50	OK	OK	Barry Brideau
Sharp DV-L70	No	No	Betty Cowin

Here are some links to other web pages with compatibility information on specific players:

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdplayers.php

http://www.dvdplusrw.org/resources/compatibilitylist_dvdvideo.html

http://www.proh.com/DVD_and_CD_compatibility_chart.shtml

http://www.yourvhstodvd.com/pages/dvd_player_compatability_a_to_j.html