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General discussion

Playing DVDs made with Samsung vr357 on other machines?

Feb 8, 2009 7:43AM PST

I have a number of DVDs made from VHS tapes with my mom's vr357. None of them play on PCs or other DVD players. She says they've been finalized.

Is it necessary to manually finalize these DVDs? Can someone recommend a tool for copying these DVDs to a more standard format if that's the problem?

Discussion is locked

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Not playing...
Feb 8, 2009 5:25PM PST

bperry666,

The finalization process must be performed to "lock" the disc and allow it to be read by other players.

Are the players your attempting to play the discs in certified for +/- R discs?

--HDTech

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Finalization?
Feb 9, 2009 12:03AM PST

My mom says she sees a message that says something like "finalizing disk..." when finishing with a tape, but she hasn't explicitly gone through the menu and picked the "finalize disk" option.

Are these separate processes?

It sounds like we need to try finalizing disks via the menu in addition to any finalizing that happens as part of copying VHS tapes.

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Finalizing...
Feb 9, 2009 4:42PM PST

bperry666,

No, the process would be one in the same.

Strange that it's not playing on other players. I'm not sure if those players are compatible with the discs you're using, though I might imagine that most players today have +/-R capabilities.

If that's not it, the unit may require service. It shouldn't be making coasters.

--HDTech

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A solution!
Mar 13, 2009 1:26AM PDT

Sorry it's taken me a while to post this, but I think people might be interested in the solution.

In short, using the finalization from the unit's menu system fixes the problem.

Why did this become a problem at all? When completing an individual recording session, some kind of message about finalizing gets displayed on the unit. My mom always waited for this to complete and assumed that this meant the DVD itself was finalized.