On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:56:03 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/09/2012 10:30, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:24:07 +0100, Janet Tweedy wrote:
It's only a disc from the Andrew Robson Bridge Club - has card play and
lessons so should be bog standard.
So a physical disc not a file you have downloaded.
Does the drawer of the player have any mention of DVD embossed onto it?
If "No" you don't have the required hardware to play a DVD. Stop.
If "Yes" try VLC, as previously linked, to play the disc.
If VLC fails is the disc a commercially produced stammped DVD one or a
short run home produced "burnt" DVD? A home produced DVD might be a bad
burn. Try it in a normal DVD player and TV.
Worth pointing out that external DVD rewriter drives can be had these
days for about £30-40 from Aldi for instance. Amazon is even cheaper:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-SE-2...7962027&sr=8-2
Just about anything will do to read a DVD - burning them requires a more
sophisticated drive with buffer overrun protection if as seems likely
your PC is slow, elderly and memory constrained.
Plus, DVD burning is a lot more complicated that CD burning. It's not
just the difference between + and - type discs. A lot of people don't
realise that a drive that burns CDs and reads DVDs won't burn DVDs.
Drives on the market around the time of XP would only burn one type (+
or -) of DVD and would not handle RW discs at all (they needed to
finalise the disc and make it read only before ejecting it)
If you want to burn DVDs then you need to track down the list of
blank discs that your drive will support (the drive manufacturer's -
as opposed to the PC manufacturer's - web site usually helps). A
particular drive make/model may require a particular issue of firmware
to support a particular make/speed of blank DVD. When buying blanks
from the more reputable online sites you will see reference to the
type of dye used on the disk or the "lead in parameters", for example.
This is all confusing but it matters, particularly if you want to buy
the "50 disc spindles" rather than the extortionately priced 5-packs
in PC World.
If you want to be confused even more, have a look at
http://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm
Cheers, Jake
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Urgling from the East End of Swansea Bay where sometimes
it's raining and sometimes it's not.