This afternoon I purchased Philips 16xDVD-R to copy my 6 min. movie from my master DVD. Well, for some strange the copies I made play on my Dell desktop machine fine but not in my Toshiba laptop. My stand-alone DVD player doesn't play the copies well either - it jumps from place to place.

I have to supply 30 copies to a client shortly and I am now quite nervous about using the 16xPhilips media. I recall reading somewhere that 16x DVDs use a different technology to achieve the fast recording speed. Could this be the reason?

I am using an external USB Philips Lightscribe burner attached to my Toshiba laptop. I am using ULead Movie factory to create the disc image first and then burn the DVDs from that image.

May be I should go back to 8xVerbatim that has never given me any trouble!

Has anyone else come across a similar problem?

Many thanks.

Welcome to the forum

usually this problem is due to a low quality media.

I suggest you to continue using of verbatim media

Many thanks. You were right. The problem was resolved by Verbatim DVDs, so all is well now. I must say I had never thought that Philips will be making low quality DVDs. Is it worth my writing to them and complain?

Thanks again for your help.

You're welcome

Well, I did some more tests and discovered that the problem is two fold: (a) the brand and (b) the DVD read drive itself. I tested copies made on Philips media in other laptops and they played fine. So, it's to do with the compatibility of the drive and media.

However, if I write the DVD on Verbatim at 1x speed then there is no problem in reading the DVD on my Toshiba laptop. But if it's recorded at 4x or higher the Toshiba laptop drive won't read it. It's all so complex. I have updated the firmware of my Toshiba Satelite A30-714 but it made no difference. It recognises some brands and not the other. If I am going to supply 30 copies of my DVDs to my client how can I ensure that all their laptops will be able to recognise the media? Burning at 1x speed seems to be a relatively safer option but is VERY time consuming.

However......... here we hit the DVD burning software issue as both Nero and Ulead DVD Movie factory jump the Custom write speed from 1x to higher once the media is inserted in the DVD burner and Record button is clicked!

Am I the only one struggling with these issue?

I'm not sure that is possible to burn at 1x; the slowest speed possible should be around 2x