Hi

I have a Toshiba 2109 DVD player. Its working great but won't read CD-Rs, so any video CDs I make won't play . It will read CD-RWs (a bit of digital blockiness though) however so I'm guessing its something to do with reflective properties?

Does anyone know of cheap CD-Rs available online in UK with good reflection like a CD-RW or even better than that?

Cheers

You are running into a standard problem with DVD players. In my experience, there is nothing you can do to make the player read a CD-R. Your only option is to use CD-RW's, or get a DVD player that specifically supports playing CD-Rs (they do exist).

By the way, I've got a Tosh 3109, I think it's the two-drawer version of the one you've got.

I burn video CDs to play on it, but I have found that I can only use CD-RWs and even those are iffy.

what you want is an apex dvd player. i payed 74 bucks for mine, it plays anything i throw at it except for mini dvd. they arent the most high quality dvd players, but for vcds and svcds and such, they do wonderfully.

I've tried CD-Rws too with mixed results depending on the brand. HP seem to be the best, but still blocky. Thats why I thought it was likely to be due to reflection as you can't really see through a CD-RW as you can with a CD-R.

Well, it's not so much about "how much" reflection, but "what kind" of reflection. The light frequencies that are returned by a DVD and a mass-produced CD are different than the frequencies returned by a CD-R. I don't think there are any CD-R's whose spectrum will work on a DVD player. CD-RWs just happen to fall into the range that the DVD laser needs, but that's more of a coincidence than a deliberate design choice.

And by the way, the reason that some DVD players will read CDR's is because they have a dual-laser pickup, with one of the lasers being used just for CDs. The ones without this pickup won't read CDRs at all, regardless of brand.

There are several different "Versions" of Apex DVD players floating around. If you want one that plays VCDs, make sure you look on the box. I have an 1100W and its an older model. The new 1100Ws don't play VCDs even though its the same model number...

There is an entire faq devoted to it...

http://www.nerd-out.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=25

You might have some luck with Verbatim Blue Backs, but they are kinda hard to find now... Verbatim has switched to Green back CDs now...

PNY makes some discs with the same material that the playstation cds have on them, you could try them as well...

Also,

You can check out this link...

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers

They state that your player shouldn't work with ANY CD-Rs or CD-RWs, and you can look at the entire list to see what players support what media and formats. It's pretty extensive... It's easiest to use if you sort by brand...

http://www.vcdhelp.org has a list of DVD players and which can deal with what format. When I got a new one I made sure to get one that could deal with DVD-R, CD-R, and with SVCD.

The cause of the problem regarding DVD players being unable to read CD-Rs is that DVD players rely on a red laser to read back the data from the disc. Apparently this wavelength of light is normally absorbed too much by the dye layer in CD-Rs to be readable by standard DVD players, whereas CD-RW discs do not contain this dye. I believe the reason for the varied results with CD-RWs is that their reflectivity of light is only about 25%, which is probably below the threshold for a lot of DVD players, but not all.

Stu

I've been reliably informed that Princo CD-Rs will work with the toshiba 2109. Trouble is they are hard to find now. Anyone know of a source?

I've been very reliably informed that Princo CD-Rs work with the Toshiba 2109 DVD player - both with audio CDs and video cds.

http://www.octave.com/cgi-bin/shop/shop.cgi/id/216.239.46.19-1030525004-0/act/specs/item/1005240273