Re: Serious help needed for Sony VX 500

On Sun, 31 Jul 2005 19:24:38 -0400, "Sue Feder"
<Monkshould@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Last Christmas my husband and I took the plunge into DVD recording. We first
>purchased the Sony GX300, and were very pleased with it. We then decided to
>replace another VHS machine, and this time we elected to purchase the VX500,
>because we have hundreds of videotapes which we still wanted to be able to
>play and, more important, to eventually transfer to DVD.

>We have had irksome problems with the 500 from the start, although my
>husband no longer recalls the details of them. However, in the last few
>weeks he has finally started to transfer a lot of his music videotapes to
>DVD. In his own rush to get things done he had failed to check the playback
>on any particular DVD before moving on to the next (I can't tell you the
>fights we've had about this particular piece of stupidity), but in very
>recent days has begun to do so. To his horror, quite a high percentage of
>the discs he has tried to play back are not playing back. There seem to be
>at least two problems, which may be related.

Sometimes the DVD/VHS recorder combo units don't have as good DVD
recording/playback as the recorder only units.


>While continuing to record on the 500, he grabbed a large handful of discs
>and checked them on the 300. He got an error message saying "Disc Dirty"
>which shortly disappears and then the disc plays without problem. These
>discs WILL play on the 500, as he later discovered, but the menus are
>clearly indicating that the discs have not been finalized. When placed into
>the 300, the discs show that they HAVE been finalized. When placed into a
>non-Sony DVD player (not recorder), a machine which in the past has played a
>lot of discs that the 500 wouldn't play(!), this non-Sony machine doesn't
>even read the disc. The problem is making him crazy, but at least with this
>situation he can watch the discs, although he has NO idea why he gets the
>"Disc Dirty" message, or what to do about the finalizing issue.

I hope he hasn't accidentally put a fingerprint on the rim of the disk
when picking it up.


>The second problem is this. He will complete, label, and finalize a disc on

Stick-on labels are known to cause problems with DVDs because they
change the weight and balance of the DVD. Write on the DVD with the
correct type of pen, don't stick labels on.


>the 500. Then he will try to play the disc (he's doing that now, before
>moving on to the next dubbing project.....) The "load" process will finish,
>"play" will come up, but the screen is blank. He will not be able to play
>the disc or, for that matter, do anything else. Those discs will not play on
>the 300, either. Twice, he WAS able to get to the System Menu, but the Title
>Menu as accessed through the System Menu was blank. So he went directly to
>the Title Menu button and all the titles were there! So he went BACK to the
>System Menu, and saw that the Edit menu was lit, which it shouldn't be if
>the disc has been finalized. So he looked for the finalization choice
>(thinking maybe he really overlooked finalizing the disc), and it was greyed
>out. Now, with those two particular discs, he can't get the System Menu
>anymore -- he gets the blank screen.

The machine is having trouble reading the disk. This points to the
stick-on label problem or using an incompatible brand or speed of
disk.


>The machine is obviously recording properly, but he thinks that the
>finalization process might be prematurely aborting. He's usually doing

There is no guarantee that it is recording properly. Many recorders
don't verify what they've written to the disk. It might be going
through the physical process of writing to the disk, but not have
written properly to the disk.


>something else while the finalization process takes place, but once he
>actually was sort of watching the machine at the time, and it seemed to him
>that the finalization message disappeared much more quickly than he had seen
>it disappear in the past. But this problem is intermittent, and seemingly
>arbitrary.

>FYI, we use the "plus" format, in case this makes a difference. We are
>royally unhappy with the performance of this machine. We have the extended
>warranty from Best Buy, but any advice you can offer, that we can tell the
>Best Buy folks, would be greatly appreciated.

In my experience, the + format is more robust and reliable than the -
format. But your machine might work better with the - format. Try
different brands and types of media and see which one works best.

Sig:
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-- Isaac Asimov
.