trouble recording DVD-RW, help please.

[happyhero]

Hi I want to record stuff for my mother to watch but I am having problems. Can anybody help me please?

I have a Panasonic DVD recorder with harddrive built in, under my TV which is probably over 5 years old but was one of the best at the time and has not seen a lot of use so it still looks like new although I have always found it incredibly slow to do things, reliable but slow software I suppose.

I have Sky and mostly use that with its harddrive but sometimes my wife asks me to record a film to keep for the kids so I record it from the SKY HD to the DVD HD so I can tidy it up (cut out adverts etc) and then I record it to a DVD-R which all works fine, but now I want to use DVD-RW so that I can keep reusing them ie lending them to my mother so she can watch some of her favourite programs and then I can record on the same disk again.

I got some Verbatim DVD-RW disks, thinking they are one of the better makes and when I go to dub (as it is called on the Panasonic DVD) it comes up as disk not recognised.

Any ideas what to do to achieve my aim?

I have seen DVD-RAM, is that what I need and will it work on my my mothers cheap DVD player?

Any advice appreciated.

Ps I have just tried formatting them on my PC but then the Panasonic DVD machine (DMR-HS2) does not recognise the disk.

 

[ChrisFrost]

Will the machine play a normal dvd?

What happend if you try to initialise a blamk disc in the Panasonic?

 

[happyhero]

Hi, yes it plays all normal DVD's.

Not sure what you mean by initialise?

If you mean use blank disks then yes it works fine with the Panasonic blanks I have.

I just looked the DVD machine up online and it seems like it make not support DVD-RW, if that is the case would DVD-RAM be any good for me to use as a re-recordable disk that can be played on other peoples DVD machines?

Also is there any clever formatting software available online to format these disks in a way that the Panasonic would be happy with?

 

[Sureitsoff?]

Will your panasonic recorder handle DVD+RW

 

[ChrisFrost]

RAM discs won't play back on another player unless the instructions specifically say that the format is supported. You'd have to have a look at your mum's DVD player instructions.

It looks like you're stuck. The Panasonic doesn't support +RW or -RW discs.

-R blanks are pretty cheap though. A 100 disc spindle is about £20, so 20p per disc.

 

[ericmark]

My Philips will support - and + with R and RW but with RW one can't finalise the disk. Moving the RW disk to my Panasonic seems it does not need to be finalised but with my mothers player it will not play RW disks or + only -R will play.

So not only do you have a problem with your recorder likely even if you had a different recorder you will still likely have a problem playing them on your mothers machine.

Even my Blu-ray player has problems where some formats can be read when on a DVD but not when on a stick or wifi. It does seem rather a lottery as to what will work with what.

With even a cheap recorder costing over £100 clearly not cost effective to change the recorder or player seems only option is to keep using once only disks.