I purchased a Pioneer DVD PLayer DV-C505. It says in the mannual that the DVD player is compatible with my computer capability. My computer is an HP pavilion 523n using the HP memories software. I burned a video CD using this sofeware of digial camera data. It will not play on the Pioneer DVD player. What am I doing wrong?

-- Gary Komjati (komjati@saferinternet.com), October 29, 2003

Answers

Pioneer DVD players demand absolute compliance with photo VCD standards, which is a major pain in the butt because almost no burning software produces truly compliant photo VCDs. If you used Nero, that will never work. There is hope. Go to http://www.vcdeasy.org and download that. If you use VCDeasy to make your photo VCD, you can use Nero or something else to burn the image file that VCDeasy creates. Photo VCDs created by VCDeasy are 100% compliant and I guarantee you that your Pioneer DVD player will play them. My dad has a Pioneer DVD player too and I was really pissed when a photo VCD I made with Nero didn't play on his DVD player. When I remade it with VCDeasy, it worked without a problem. The problem is that photo VCD standards require specific resolutions and Nero is too lazy to convert the JPGs to the right resolution. Most DVD player don't care and will play them anyway, but Pioneer does care. Pioneer DVD players also had some problems with some SVCD discs because the player read a flag that certain video recording programs did not set correctly. Almost no DVD player that supports SVCD reads the flag, but for some reason Pioneer does and it totally freaked the player out if the flag wasn't correct. Pioneer makes a good DVD player, but it sure would be nice if they weren't so fussy about some things.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), October 30, 2003.