I just purchased a Walker WP80DVD/HDD recorder for my Mam. As she is getting on a bit recording to the hard drive is beyond her so the HDD facility is a waste. I do the recording for her to blank DVDs as she can follow this. She gets a bit annoyed if she has watched half a film and stops it to watch it the next night only to find that the DVD starts playing from the start again. I suggested pausing the DVD & to come back the next night & press play. This way she can carry on from where she left off. However I'm wondering if having the DVD on pause for this long would be bad for the machine.

LOL...She's used to VHS tape where she could pick up from where she last watched to.

I don't suppose it matters much if the recorder is on pause or being used to play lots of films - the laser will wear just the same.

Have you thought about teaching her about chapter skip. Start with a CD to help her get used to playing from half way through the disc, then show her how it works on a DVD you've recorded.

Trouble with that is....

Pausing a DVD may only work for a few minutes. If you don't press PLAY again after a certain amount of time a lot of machines go into STOP. So you'd be back to square 1.

With some machines I've used the disc is kept spinning and the laser energised just reading the same bit of data over and over again. leaving a machine in that state for 24hrs is not going to do anything for it's life expectancy really. Hence why they switch to stop all by them selves.

The best thing might be to get a cheap DVD player where it will resume from when stop was pressed, all my DVD players have done this - unlike Blu-ray!

I've never seen a DVD player or recorder carrying on from where you stopped it. All I have seen is that when you press stop you are prompted to press play to play again. In this mode after pressing play the DVD resumes from where you last stopped. But also in this mode isn't it the case that if you press stop ONCE the DVD is in effect in pause mode? I pressed stop once the other night & I could distinctly hear the motor running.

My Pioneer DVD player resumes as long as you don't press stop twice. It also remembers the title ID so can resume previous DVD's. I don't know how many it remembers but at least two. My previous Pioneer only remembered the current DVD until it was ejected.

It doesn't record though. I have a HDD-only thing for that.

ps3 seems to remember where it is - im sure i read it actually remembers multiple disks

im sure my sony hdd also resumes even when switched off, as long as you dont take the disk out - might be wrong on that though

You must have been unlucky with your DVD players then. Both my Panny DVD recorder and Sony Blu-ray player (for DVD not Blu-ray) will resume a DVD from where it stopped even after the unit is put into standby. I suspect (though I can't confirm this) that if they were powered off at the wall then they would lose their place.

Very likely on any DVD player straight after you press pause you would expect the motor to carry on running, this is good design because very often people will only stop for a short while. However you would expect the motor to stop after a time decided appropriate by the manufacturer.

Blu-ray disks not resuming from where you stopped them is by far my biggest gripe with Blu-ray, I find that an astonishing feature to omit.

bobcar

as i said, i'm sure i read that a ps3 remembers where any disk (ie multiple disks) has got to - its got a big enough HDD to store a memory address or two, for sure

The PS3 may well remember the position of a DVD when it's switched off at the wall because it has the HDD. A normal DVD player won't have that so unless it stores the location in FLASH or EEPROM then it will lose the information when power is turned off at the wall though SRAM may keep it's memory for quite a long time. It doesn't really matter that much to me anyway as long as the position is kept when in standby and both my devices do that.

Does the PS3 keep the position of Blu-ray disks? I'd be surprised if it does because I thought that was a "feature" of Blu-ray and only some (very few) disks allow restarting from the stop position.

My player resumes after pressing stop only once as well, but is it in pause mode after pressing stop once?

Try turning it off (into standby). Then take it out of standby and see if it remembers the position, if it does then it would be okay for your mother.

Stop is unlikely to be the same as pause even if the motor does spin for a while after pressing stop, you would expect it to stop eventually.

I'll try that & let you know.

It went back to the start again. Very Annoying.