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General discussion

Please Help Me w/my Samsung DVD-VR357 (DVD REC/Player)

Jun 29, 2008 10:16AM PDT

Okay I have a Samsung DVD-VR357 Dvd recorder. Since I first bought I have been recording movies on it and played them back fine on it. Well recently I made copies of different movies on vhs I had & many other shows on tv. I recorded the same way but not one of the Dvd + R's will play in ANY OTHER DVD PLAYER! Not even my new laptop or any other pc for that matter. I've tried all my friend's and families dvd players and pc's and all the screen says is that the disc is either damaged or blank. When I recorded them I initialized, and finalized according to the book that came with it! What is the problem? Since then I've also recorded onto DVD-R's and DVD-RW & DVD+RW's etc. and none will play back in anything BUT This Samsung player. I don't understand it!! Sad HELP ME PLEASE! Some of these dvd's were of family home movies too and now they're lost. I just recorded them thinking it worked since I played it back not realizing they wouldn't play in any other dvd player. I wasted appx 100 dvds doing this too! I atleast thought I would be able to play them in my laptop - but nope. It won't load and says the same exact thing - that the disc is either damaged or blank. Which they weren't. I used brand new ones and right after taking them out I put them into a cd case so nothing would happen to them. UGH! It's seriously pissing me off. Please help me! Thank You!

Discussion is locked

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Are the discs finalized?
Aug 18, 2008 5:00AM PDT

Nitelov,

I can appreciate your frustration, and I apologize that you?ve been unable to play the discs on other players.

First we?ll try to figure out why the discs aren?t playing, and then we?ll discuss a back-up plan.

Are you sure you finalized the discs? That?s a very important step in the process ? if you re-insert the disc, does it give you the option to finalize it?

Second, not all laptop drives can read ?R +R and ?RW discs. Some of the entry level units can?t play all formats, although most of the newer ones available in the last 2 years have those capabilities. Make sure you?re not trying to play a ?R disc in a +R-only player.

Let?s assume your player isn?t burning the information in a way that other players can read. The glass "half full" news is that your data isn?t lost, it?s just stuck on a disc that one player can read. Obviously that's not an acceptable situation for someone that burned 100+ discs but at least there is a back-up plan if all else fails.

I would exhaust every other avenue first, BUT I?ll give you the worst case scenario that still gives you your important family memories.

You can still output those videos to another DVD Recorder?s input, and copy the videos verbatim. The decoder in almost any DVD-R unit will accept the signal and record in a format that other players can read.

But let?s exhaust the other options first and make sure those discs are finalized. Otherwise, they won?t play in any player regardless.

Let me know.

Mr. Samsung

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won't let me finalize
Mar 24, 2009 3:10AM PDT

So I have a similar problem I burned a dvd+rw with the samsung dvd-vr 357 and it only plays in that player it won't play on any other player but it doesn't give the option to finalize the disk. help what can i do - besides trying to rerecord it all??

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making disks playable in other machines
Mar 24, 2009 12:38PM PDT

Doing the manual finalization does work.

I don't have the manual handy, but the option to finalize is a level down from the top level menu (accessed via the remote). The top level one is something like "disk options".

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manual finalization
Mar 25, 2009 12:26AM PDT

The problem I have is that it doesn't even give me an option to finalize. Any idea with that?

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Have you found a solution?
Feb 8, 2009 7:34AM PST

I've seen a similar problem where DVDs created from VHS tapes on my mom's vr357 won't play on other computers or DVD players.

Does manually finalizing the DVDs help?

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Computer can't recognize DVD recorded on Samsung DVD-VR 357
Mar 30, 2009 12:13PM PDT

Sometimes I have the same problem when my laptop is unable to open DVD-RW disc recorded on Samsung DVD-VR 357 even after finalization.I noticed that the problem is coming from bad disc quality.For example,"Imation" DVD-RW disc won't play on my PC but no problem at all if it's "Maxell" DVD-RW.

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different disk types
Mar 30, 2009 12:21PM PDT

I'm using DVD-R and DVD+R. I haven't tried -RW.

Manually finalizing works for my problem, but it sounds like you have a different problem.