why can' some vcd's be played on dvd players?

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Hi, I read on someones page that some vcd's can't be played on dvd players, but they can be played on vcd players, and playstation with vcd hook up. Why is this, and how can i avoid this when burning vcd's? Thanks!

-- shannan (shannansgroove@yahoo.com), February 05, 2002

Answers

There is a big distinction between homemade VCDs burned to CD-R and CD-RW media and commercial VCDs which are pressed on silver blanks that aren't like CD-R/W media. Every DVD player I know of will play VCD pressed on commercial blanks, although I suppose it's possible that some stupid DVD player some place in the world won't play them. VCD video is within the standards for DVD, so it's stupid to not support VCD when the exact same video could be burned to a DVD disc and be within spec. The real question is this - does your DVD player support burnable media or not? To do so generally requires a 2nd laser beam be present specifically to read CD-R/W media. Many players from major manufacturers do not include a 2nd beam in their player, so it won't read VCD burned to CD-R or CD-RW discs. In a few very rare cases, some single beam DVD players will read CD-RW media and a few will even read one specific brand of CD-R media, but most players with one laser beam won't read either. www.vcdhelp.com has a DVD player compatibility list that lists what DVD players support what formats and media. It's also worth mentioning that some VCD players don't support CD-R/W media either. I don't know anything about playstation. If you have a DVD player that doesn't support CD-R/W, there's nothing you can do about it. Commercial blanks that I mentioned earlier won't work in CD-R burners. They have to be stamped kind of like vinyl LPs.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), February 06, 2002.

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