Hi, can anyone help me. I sometimes download TV series and movies from the net. When I burn them to DVD, there are some that will not play in my DVD player to watch on TV, either they wont play or they are scratchy, freeezes or stalls. Is it possible they have some type of copy protection built in. When I play them back on my computer they work great. Also, I have Nero and Power Producer as burners. When I burn using Power Producer, I can play it on my TV DVD player and my computer. However, I can only put about 2 hours on a 4.7 gb disc. When, I burn usuing Nero I can put about 8 hours on it but I can't play on my TV DVD player. Please let me know why this is? Also, is it possible to hook my tower up to my TV. That way I could use my computer to play this stuff. Looking forward ti your replies! Thanks.
Burning DVD's
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It could most likely be an issue between your DVDr and your set top player (one hooked up to TV). Some like +r and some like -r. Some like certain brands more than others. So what kind of DVD player are you using and what kind of media are you using? Some players need you to adjust the bitrate of your encoding in order to play well (a bit more advanced). The reason you can put more than two hours on a DVD with Nero is because Nero compresses the data to store that much... You take a hit on quality when you do this. A 4.7G DVDR will hold 2 hours of DVD quality without compression. A cmputer DVD player/recorder will play both -r and +r in most cases although there are acceptions to that rule. Can you hook up your pc to the TV? Yup, but you may need some hardware and software to do that. A tv tuner card or capture card plus the software to run those. Check out ATI all in Wonder Series... Will do what you want and are very good.
Hi IggyP, thanks for the feed back. My DVD player does play both formats, +/-. I am not sure what type of media I am using. They play on my windows player and the icon that I click to play is an avi file. That is why I think there is some kind of protection built in the file. Appreciate the info on Nero/Power Producer. I guess a standard DVD player will not uncompress the files to play. I will look into the tuner card. Again, thanks for your time and support!
Transferring (converting) avi files downloaded from the net to a DVD can be very complicated. There are many "1-click" applications that will do this, but quality is usually not very good.
Unless you are willing to learn how to combine avi's, seperate audio and video, decode each, process aspect ratio changes, fix audio sync, mux, reauthor and burn, you are better off just buying a DVD player that supports DIVX format.
DIVX is usually the format of the avi files you download. Copy the files to a DVD and you are all set.
I personally have not seen or compared the quality of DIVX DVD players, so do your own research.
Unless you are willing to learn how to combine avi's, seperate audio and video, decode each, process aspect ratio changes, fix audio sync, mux, reauthor and burn, you are better off just buying a DVD player that supports DIVX format.
DIVX is usually the format of the avi files you download. Copy the files to a DVD and you are all set.
I personally have not seen or compared the quality of DIVX DVD players, so do your own research.
May I suggest having a look at www.vchhelp.com. I learned a ton from that site on encoding and mulitplexing all formats. Go to the tutorial section and have a look around. You will find many answers to questions you didnt know you had 
A somewhat decent one click program is DVD santa (I know stupid name). It will let you combine many files to one DVD. Side note though. Even if you put 8 hours on a DVD (compressed) it should still play if its encoded right if other DVDrs play just fine. You will loose some quality as you know already but when you are doing tv shows its good enough. Personally, I dont even encode anymore. I picked up an LG player for 80 bucks that plays Divx. This is an amzing player, so much so that I bought two more as spares (they were on sale). The Divx is flawless so far and I can put many titles on one disk with no visiable quality loss. Could be much cheaper option than hooking up the tower.
A somewhat decent one click program is DVD santa (I know stupid name). It will let you combine many files to one DVD. Side note though. Even if you put 8 hours on a DVD (compressed) it should still play if its encoded right if other DVDrs play just fine. You will loose some quality as you know already but when you are doing tv shows its good enough. Personally, I dont even encode anymore. I picked up an LG player for 80 bucks that plays Divx. This is an amzing player, so much so that I bought two more as spares (they were on sale). The Divx is flawless so far and I can put many titles on one disk with no visiable quality loss. Could be much cheaper option than hooking up the tower.You can use FabExpress to automate the steps.
You should also try burning at a slower rate, close all other programs, experiment with a DVDRW first before wasting DVDRs. You may have an old player. Buy a 35 dollar DVD player from Canadian Tire with all the latest formats, it will play whatever you throw at it.
You should also try burning at a slower rate, close all other programs, experiment with a DVDRW first before wasting DVDRs. You may have an old player. Buy a 35 dollar DVD player from Canadian Tire with all the latest formats, it will play whatever you throw at it.
Built-in copy protection? No.
It's possible for "stalls" to arise from too much compression. If you apply a lot of compression, some of the lower-cost players will overburden the poor little CPU in the box uncompressing the video, and it'll have trouble keeping up. To keep the costs down, they're probably engineered for about 2Gig/hour (maybe 2-5Mbps).
It's possible for "stalls" to arise from too much compression. If you apply a lot of compression, some of the lower-cost players will overburden the poor little CPU in the box uncompressing the video, and it'll have trouble keeping up. To keep the costs down, they're probably engineered for about 2Gig/hour (maybe 2-5Mbps).
It can have a whole lot to do with the firmware in the DVD player also but yes, some of the cheaper machines dont handle compression very well... You should also try to get a machine that allows you to update the firmware. Such players are LG, Yamaha, Denon, and some Toshiba.Anynym said:
There's a much easier way to do all this if you have the money.
Buy the LG DVD player (model# LDV-535)
http://ca.lge.com/en/prodmodeldetail...Select+a+model
I paid $150 for it and plays almost everything from DivX, XivD, avi, mpeg4 to even .jpeg files.
All I do is download the torrent and burn it straight to the DVD (which takes 10 minutes) and I'm done.
No need to convert with DVDsanta or Winavi
The burner I use is Sonic Recordnow
Buy the LG DVD player (model# LDV-535)
http://ca.lge.com/en/prodmodeldetail...Select+a+model
I paid $150 for it and plays almost everything from DivX, XivD, avi, mpeg4 to even .jpeg files.
All I do is download the torrent and burn it straight to the DVD (which takes 10 minutes) and I'm done.
No need to convert with DVDsanta or Winavi
The burner I use is Sonic Recordnow
Great guys, I went and bought a new dvd player ( Sanyo $59.99) that plays divx, mpeg4, etc., and now it works. I can now burn using Nero all the time. I downloaded an entire season of 18 half hour episodes in under 10 minutes. Power producer would have taken 10 hours. Really appreciate all the advice and support. I hope others gained too!
