[Henryjay]

About 3 or 4 years ago I bought a Samsung DVD-VR320 DVD/VCR Combi recorder. The main reason was to transfer all my VHS tapes, taken from my camcorder, onto DVD. this all worked out OK and then I continued by transferring direct from the camcorder onto DVD.

My problem is, playback of these DVD's has become increasingly temperamental with lots of picture break up and stoppages, sometimes message 'This disc cannot be played or recorded. Check disc'. The discs I used were all good quality, Panasonic etc., DVD-RW, formatted to DVD-V and finalised after recording finished. I have cleaned the laser lens using a soft brush alone, and also with Servisol switch cleaner. Sometimes there is some improvement but basically unsuccessful. I also have a cheap Bush DVD player and at first this seemed to playback OK but even this, whilst better than the Samsung, still gives problems.I am at a loss to know what to do next. Very frustrating because my whole reason for going onto DVD was to safeguard the old video. I am tempted to go and buy new equipment based on the feeling that the Bush is fairly old and was cheap and the Samsung has had some iffy reviews.

Any ideas what is causing my problem, guys?

Thanks in advance,

Henryjay

PS Should add that on the Bush it sometimes seems to be time or heat related, starts problem after an hour or so, then switch off for a while, come back, and OK.

[Chris Frost]

Try a bit of trouble-shooting first...
[LIST][*]Do these discs play OK in somebody else's DVD player?[/LIST][LIST][*]Is normal DVD playback affected?[/LIST]
Recordable discs reflect less light than the silver coated commercial DVDs. If the laser mech is going out of alignment (anyone remember the early Philips DVDR machines?) then you'll notice the effect sooner with recordables than standard discs.

[tomconti]

If they were cheap blanks you might find they are now demonstrating "you get what you pay for".

Best bet is to get all the faulty discs and try to copy them to new decent blanks.

You might find the PC dvd drive plays the discs better than a set top so use it to make copies while you still can

If they are DVD+ discs is it possible the recorder was using a Philips dvd drive in it.

These were notoriously unreliable .

Every dvd+ disc I made on a Philips recorder is now either uncopyable or unplayable on some players.

I rescued most by making new copies but its too late for some of them

[Henryjay]

Cheers guys. Will try, hopefully, playing on PC and burning copies onto, someone has suggested, Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim DVD-R's.
Thanks again
Henryjay

[Henryjay]

Hi guys
It's me back after all this time but, finally, with the answer to my problem! It's seems ridiculous really. What I didn't say in my original posts on this subject was that I had applied circular, DVD size, paper labels to all of the DVD's in question. These were standard CD labels, purchased from Staples and their own make.
After to continue to wrestle with the problem for all of this time, and always suspecting it was heat related, in desperation I played one of the suspect DVD's but this time with a bag of frozen peas sitting on the top of the DVD player, directly above the DVD slot, to keep everything cool! Lo and behold the disc played the full 2 hours without a glitch. So it was heat related.
However I was still no closer to a solution, until I thought about those paper labels. What if they were having some influence. So with nothing to lose I set about removing one. (not as difficult as it might have been), and bingo! Suddenly
everything was fine and the disc played perfectly!
I am still not sure why the labels should have this effect but they certainly did. Something to do with expansion rates, paper and disc? Perhaps some of you guys can throw further light on the matter. I do remember reading somewhere that sticking labels on DVD's wasn't recommended but had no idea of the problem it could cause.
Regards
Henryjay