I've been scouring this site for a few days now, and I've learned a lot.. I'm getting a pretty goofy problem, maybe someone can offer some advice.

I have a Sony DVP 330. I took a home-made VCD to the store to find a machine it would work on before I bought it in January. Last week, I did up some home movies in Premiere and used Xing to export to MPEG using the NTSC preset. No matter what I do, Xing gives me the error "Not enough room on user supplied data structure" at the very end of the conversion, but it still plays on the computer. I've repeatedly exported the clips to MPEG with the same results.

I tried it out anyway and burned a CD-R using EZ-CD 3.5 (Yamaha 4416S burner) and it did not play in my DVD. I was kinda prepared for this. Then I burned a (with Nero) copy of the first CD onto a CD-RW at 2x and IT WORKED! It's pretty jerky in some parts and tends to hang for 10-20 seconds at a time, but it works. So I made a copy of the original again, on the SAME BRAND OF MEDIA (silver Pacific Digital) that played in the store (and still plays at home, BTW) but this new copy does not work! I took some suggestions from some other posts and went out and bought some Sony CDQ-74CN blanks and they don't work either (I burned at 1x).

It seems I can repeatedly get the CD-RW to work, but the CD-Rs simply will not! The puzzling thing is that I have a CD-R I wrote with the same burner, same media brand, even a subset of the footage I'm trying now that works and I can't duplicate this!

I was leaning toward the problem being with Xing not encoding properly, but the CD-RW will play the disk! Is it possible that the combination of the CD-R maybe being a *little* less readable (just a guess here) than the CD-RW coupled with Xing reporting an error at the end of the conversion is causing this? I thought I was being pretty thorough with my testing...

Any input on this would be greatly appreciated.. And yes, I wish I had bought a Pioneer...

-- Rob Hipkin (netjedi@home.com), February 22, 2000

Answers

If you want to use CD-R media then the only one brand that will do it flawlessly is the Pioneer DV525D or DVC302D. The Phillip will also work but it kinda skip and jerk at places, same goes with the APEX A600. Somewhere on this forum someone has went through the explaination about firmwares on these other players. CD-RW media seems to work on most of them, but not all. Some of these other DVD will accept the CD-RW media but will not play it flawlessly as the Pioneer. I too did some testing on my own with most CD-R/CD-RW brands on DVD players, before purchasing the two units that i currently own. Both of them are Pioneers (the two models mentioned above)...I don't really think it's the encoder that causing the problem, rather it's the DVD players themselves are the real cause. I have panasonic encoder and it also hang on me at the end of the clip sometime, but that did not mess up my Pioneers. I've tested Sony, Memorex, HP, Pacific Digital, PYN, Verbatim, TDK, and CompUSA various brands. I've tested both CD-R & CD-RW on these brands. I've tested both 74min & 80min media. I've burned them with HP burner, TDK burner, Mitsubisi burner, and QPS burner. I've used NTI, EZ CD, WinOnCD, and Nero. If you think you have a problem with your Sony...try a Toshiba 3109!!! This player will not play any brand of CD-R or CD-RW!!! I've tried and nothing will work on it. It will accept the CD-RW disc as a VCD but it will not play. It's the firmware on the DVD players which causing your problem....

lnguyen

-- -- (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), February 23, 2000.

Thanks for the input..

Are there firmware upgrades for DVD players? It seems feasable (just mail out a CD), but unlikely that the manufacturers could/would distribute this upgrade. I've breifly checked out the Sony web site looking for this, but haven't seen anything.

I guess the real question here is "Is there anything I can do?" I would expect a certain level of customer service out of Sony but in reality, are they really going to ship me a firmware upgrade based on each consumers specifications?

I just went over and succesfully tested every single one of my VCDs on my father-in-law's Pioneer... I am sooo sorry I gave my money to Sony.

-- Rob Hipkin (netjedi@home.com), February 23, 2000.

No firmware is sent out on a CD for DVD players. Just as firmware for BIOSes on PCs are only available for download. No one in their right mind would upgrade the firmware themselves or even do it for that matter. You risk damaging the player if something goes wrong. What happens when you need one? You send the unit back to the manufacturer. The manufacturere either upgrades the bios for you(which is done with a flash ROM not CD) by removing the old ROM chip and adding a new one. Some manufacturers also just replace the unit with the newer one. Should you have made the unit multi-region, kiss that goodbye. Any mods you made or done to it also go.

-- The Lone Ranger (rutger_S@hotmail.com), February 23, 2000.

Rob,

Sony DVD brand is not so bad (It WILL PLAY HOMEMADE VCDs). You just have to use CD-RW discs. Granted that's more costly then the CD- R discs; However, look at the bright side of it: You can erase and put new clips on the old one. Think of it as a VHS tape which you can record over and over again(Don't do it too much however, you'll start to get random trash on the output after a while). CompUSA has a 4X CD- RW CompUSA brand which is made in Taiwain. It's a blue-silver type of media which is most suitable for video just like the PYN media. CompUSA has it on and off sale for 29.99 for 25 disc on a spindle. That's not bad price for a good quality 4X media. I like to put most of my VCD creation on a CD-RW any way, due to its nature of erasability...

-- (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), February 23, 2000.

I just phoned my local Sony repair depot asking about an upgrade.. The guy on the phone thought I was completely crazy and said it was impossible. He then checked some bulletins and said that - to his surprise - yes, this model was supposed to recieve some updates. I have no idea what the updates consist of, but I'll let you all know what happens when I pick it up in a week.

Why wouldn't they have an upgrade? It wouldn't surprise me if they had cheaped out on production and didn't include a flash bios like you find in a burner, but I've done firmware upgrades on my motherboard, CD burner in the same way. In fact I did a firmware upgrade on an AIT backup tape drive (WAY more expensive than a DVD player!) where they simply shipped me a tape to put into the drive. The tape autoplayed and upgraded the firmware. You take the same risks when you do any of the above firmware upgrades, if it bombs then the worst that happens is you have to replace the bios if it can't be re-flashed.

-- Rob Hipkin (netjedi@home.com), February 23, 2000.