This one has been bugging me for a while too, and I saw people asking the same thing here, well I figured it out. Somebody here said that this didn't happen with VCD1.1, but all software writes VCD2.0 nowadays. So here's what to do to trick your Philips DVD player in thinking it has a VCD1.1:

1. Create your VCD as usual but don't write it to CD but to an image file. 2. Open this image file in a HEX editor and search for VIDEO_CD (this only appears once). You should see something like this:

00 00 89 00 56 49 44 45 4F 5F 43 44 02 00 00 00; .. VIDEO_CD....

Now change the '02 00' (this means VCD2.0) right after VIDEO_CD into '01 01' (this means VCD1.1) and you should get something like this.

00 00 89 00 56 49 44 45 4F 5F 43 44 01 01 00 00; .. VIDEO_CD....

3. Write the image to a CD...

And behold, now you're player thinks it's a VCD1.1 and displays the trackinfo and time elapsed ifo right! I've tested this on a DVD710 with a CD written by Nero 5.018 but this should work for other VCD authoring apps too. So that's all it is, two f!@#ing bytes!

-- Spheroid76 (spheroid76@hotmail.com), August 29, 2000

Answers

Also you could look into vcdimager. Becuase the source is open, you could easly add this option, that way you don't have to go in with a hex editor. This is assuming you are makeing a simple vcd.

http://www.hvrlab.dhs.org/~hvr/vcdimager/

-- eric (eric@nospam.snowmoon.com), August 29, 2000.

I prefer using GPL'ed tools whenever possible but I tried this program and it didn't work at all. It played fine on my Pc with the Creative DXR3 kit but my Philips DVD standalone refused to play it.

-- Spheroid76 (spheroid76@hotmail.com), August 29, 2000.

I had the Philips DVD player and exchanged it for a Pioneer when I finally got them to acknowledge that there is a problem playing CDR disks. They said it would require a firmware upgrade and didn't no if one would ever be done

-- Al (amccraw@ix.netcom.com), August 29, 2000.