I have been told that it is an issue of DVD's being more "shiny" and therefore requiring a weaker (or somehow different) laser to read them. CDR's and CDRW's are a lot less shiny (just have a look) and, therefore, the DVD-grade lasers often have trouble reading them. Some of the higher end DVD players will then include a dual laser design in order to have seperate lasers optimized for reading the different formats. I do not know for a fact, but I imagine that some of the players that sporadically can read some disks and not others use a DVD laser that is tweaked to somehow be more sensitive to less reflective formats. Check to see whether a particular model includes a dual laser and is designed to read all formats in question. If not, its ability to read CDR's may be hit or miss on a disk by disk basis. I have a Pioneer Elite DV-37 that is described by Pioneer as using a "Twin-Wave Laser Pickup for CD / Video CD / CD-R / CD-RW playback." I think this incorporates what I'm trying to describe. Truth be told, however, I haven't even tried a CDR in it yet as I listen to music on a seperate player. Guess I'll try it out when I get home.
DVD s reading CD-R s and CD-RW s
How many of you have had problems with your DVD player trying to read "burned" CD's ??? I know that my Sony won't do it. I was talking to my business partner and he said that he would try his DVD player when he got home. Lo and Behold !!! His Philips DVD player passed with flying colors. It was able to read both CD-R's AND CD-RW's !!! This might be because it uses two seperate lasers, one for video and another for audio. As such, i figured that i would pass this info along for those that might be interested in such things. At the same time, i was wondering if anyone else has any other DVD players to add to the "good reading skills" list ??? Sean
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