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When some burned DVDs are played the picture becomes pixilated and the DVD drive/DVD player stops playing

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CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive/writer problem: The output of some burned DVDs becomes pixilated and DVD drive/DVD player stops playing after about 45 minutes

I have burned many DVDs in the DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW formats on a DVD drive and a Panasonic DVD recorder that I connected to my media center PC. The output of some of the discs becomes pixilated and they stop playing after about 45 minutes. Can you tell me how what the cause is and how to prevent this from happening?

Answer

The quality of DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW/DVD+RW discs can vary considerably - even between the discs made by the major disc manufacturers.

Always avoid very cheap or non-branded discs, because they are often of inferior quality or can evenbe the rejected discs of the major manufacturers.

The optical characteristics of recordable discs differ considerably compared to those of pressed commercial DVD discs. The reflective pits that are burned into the layer(s) of the disc by its laser during the burning process, which store the binary digital data, are not as well defined in recordable discs as they are on non-recordable pressed discs (retail movie discs, etc.) and this is the cause of possible read errors. Some PC DVD drives or DVD players are better at reading weakly-defined pits or correcting read errors than others.

For that reason, the playback of burned discs is also more easily disrupted by dirt and dust on the disc or fluff on the laser pickup of the drive/player. Playback problems of the kind you are experiencing are often put right after using a good-quality disc cleaner or switching to another brand of disc.

You should visit the website of the DVD drive/player manufacturer's website, because it often provides information on which brands of disc have been tested as being compatible with that DVD drive/player.