I have three players able to play a DVD and each one has a different list list of formats that they can handle.
My parents DVD player will only handle -R and will not work with +R discs.
One will play MPEG, the other AVI. Two have USB sockets the other has firewire.
One has LAN connection and will play BBC iPlayer films. The one with built in hard drive needs discs to be finalised before they will play on the other two players.
And one will also play Blu-ray discs.
VCD's will also only play one selected DVD players, sure the Blu-ray player will not play them even though most expensive of the three.
It is the same with computer DVD players, RAM discs seem only to work with selected few players.
I seem to remember Nero has a special function to produce a DVD to play on most DVD players but with mine it is not required.
File format Extensions with Blu-ray player. Sony
MPEG-1 Video/PS*1*5
MPEG-2 Video/PS,
TS*1*6
“.mpg,” “.mpeg,”
“.m2ts,” “.mts”
DivX*2 “.avi,” “.divx”
MPEG-4 AVC*1*5 “.mkv,” “.mp4,”
“.m4v,” “.m2ts,”
“.mts”
WMV9*1*5 “.wmv,” “.asf”
AVCHD*5 *3
The Philips Video Playback with DVD recorder with hard drive says:-
• Disc Playback Media: CD, CD-R/CD-RW, DVD,
DVD-Video, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R,
DVD-RW, MP3-CD, Video CD, SVCD
• Compression formats: MPEG2, MPEG1, DivX
• Video disc playback system: PAL, NTSC
The Panasonic WMA, MP3, MPEG4 and DivX
I have noted re-recordable discs DVD-RW will play on Panasonic without finalizing but the DVD-R needs finalizing.
The Panasonic lists:-
Discs that cannot be played
DVD-RW version 1.0, DVD-Audio, DVD-ROM, CD-ROM,
CDV, CD-G, SACD, Photo CD, DVD-RAM that cannot be
removed from their cartridge, 2.6-GB and 5.2-GB DVDRAM,
and “Chaoji VCD” available on the market including
CVD, DVCD and SVCD that do not conform to IEC62107.
I have found the best way to convert my Mini DV video camera output to DVD is with firewire direct into the Philips DVD recorder on to it's hard drive first so I can split into tracks, blank out bad bits, name and put in 5 minute markers. It is in some ways a pain having to do it all in real time as my camera is a digital tape 10Gb per tape. But into the PC there is not as many options. With Philips DVD writer I can put at best quality 1 hour of video and at lowest 8 hours of video the latter is about same quality as a VCR. Although the computer does have with Nero some options as to quality it does not match stand alone unit.
I bought it cheap when Freeview came out as it does not have Freeview. It cost me £80 brand new and has 80GB hard drive. Now about 5 years old. Although in theory the PC is second best to proper computer (MAC) for video work in practice the standalone units seem much better. Maybe as most run on Linux?
I did try Linux but every time something minor went wrong to find some one who could fix it was a real pain. So I returned to Microsoft.