DVD + R discs

[ahopeter]

with the advice of the people of this forum, i finally figured out how to put my homemade movies on dvd onto other dvd discs for family... and which hardware i need.  

so i have successfully made the movies onto my dvd +r discs from memorex, but it will not work with my philips discs!?!  they are both dvd+r, 4.7gb... but the philips will not work?  the philips reads the other discs fine...but once it starts to try to write onto the new disc, it stops...any ideas?  thanks

[Chandler]

Some DVD writers are picky about the media that they will write to.  There are a couple of things to try:

1) Update the firmware.  With DVD writers, the firmware stores information about supported media, and so updating it is almost always beneficial.

2) Write at a lower speed.  In some situations, even if a media brand isn't supported, drives can be forced to write to them by selecting a lower writing speed.

Generally, I'd stick to Ritek dye based discs, they have very good compatibility, are reliable and among the cheapest.  Look out for Arita branded Riteks, they tend to be very cheap and are what I use.

[ahopeter]

Thanks Chandler, but i am not that good with computers..sorry.  
how do i update firmware?

how do write at a lower speed?

how can i tell if discs are ritek based?

sorry for all the questions...thanks so much for the help.

[Chandler]

how do i update firmware?

Generally you download a file from the manufacturer's web site, or they will send you it from their technical support dept and then you follow the instructions provided.  Some updaters run from within Windows, for other you have to make an MS-DOS boot floppy disk to update.

how do write at a lower speed?

This depends on what software you use.  For Nero, which I use, you select the writing on the Burn Compilation page.  I can choose between 1X, 2.4X, 4X and 8X.  For some discs, I have to select 2.4X if they're not recognised.

how can i tell if discs are ritek based?

Put one of your discs in the drive, and run Nero InfoTool:
ftp://ftp6.nero.com/InfoTool.zip
Look on the Disc page and it should tell you the manufacturer.  If not, then there is another utility which can read the manufacturer data, but I've forgotten what it's called.  Also, they might say G03 or G04 around the hub of the disc itself.

sorry for all the questions...thanks so much for the help.

Don't worry about it, we're here to help. :D