A Common Problem

Q: I recently purchased a VHS-to-DVD recorder. I hooked it up and it worked great. But when I took the DVD to church and tried to play it, the church's DVD player could not read it.

I thought maybe it was just a fluke, so I took the DVD to a friend's house and it did the same thing. I tried several different DVD players, but the DVD would not work except on the machine that I recorded it with

What is up with this???

A: The likely culprit is an incompatible format. About 12 years ago, the only recordable DVD format was DVD-RAM (DVD Random Access Memory) — a rewritable DVD, usually encased in a cartridge.

This was replaced by the DVD-R (or DVD-RW, if the media was rewritable) format that we usually call "minus R" or "dash R." In 2002, this was superseded by a better format, DVD+R (or DVD+RW), called "plus R."

More recently, manufacturers created a hybrid that could read and write both plus and minus. Those drives are called DVD±R(W) or SuperMulti.

The software you used to create your DVD probably used the most current format supported by the blank DVD. So if you inserted a "plus" or a "plus/minus" blank, you probably got a "plus" recording. The player at your church only sprechen sie minus, so it wouldn't be able to play it.

Since minus is the more universal format, try recording on a minus blank — or, if your software allows it, select "minus" when you record.

Keep in mind that Total Media offers video conversion services (for more details see this page) , or if you're intent on doing the work yourself, you might be interested in one of our all-in-one converters that offer a simple one-button "set-it-and-forget-it" way to save your aging tapes.