Why won't certain DVDs play in my DVD player?

March 27, 2009 9:20 PM

Our Kia Sedona has one of those built in DVD players, An Audiovox PROV710. For the life of me I can't get DVDs to play in it.

In the manual it says:

Types of Discs your DVD will play
• DVD discs – DVDs discs which contain video.
• Audio discs – Audio CDs contain musical or sound content only.
• MP3 discs – A disc that contains audio files (for example, a CD-R with downloaded MP3 files).
Loading and Playing Discs

Before you load a disc, make sure that it is compatible with the player.
Note: the following Discs CANNOT be used with this player :
• MiniDisc
• Laserdisc
• CD-I, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM

So it won't play DVD-ROM disks but it will play DVDs. I'm confused.
Ironically, I found a DVD of "Dawn of The Dead" that was all scratched and popped it in. It started right up.

I took a stack of my daughters CDs and of all of them, only Lion King and Nemo worked like a champ. I can't tell what the difference is between the ones that work and the ones that don't.

posted by KevinSkomsvold to technology (5 answers total)

"So it won't play DVD-ROM disks but it will play DVDs. I'm confused."

DVD-ROM is a data format (like CDi and CD-ROM). What you think of as "DVDs" aren't DVD-ROM format.

"For the life of me I can't get DVDs to play in it....a DVD of "Dawn of The Dead"... started right up."

These kinds of drive mechanisms are usually pretty crap quality, but generally speaking if it won't play "a DVD" it's because the DVD is a DVDR on crummy media, the title is too copy-protected to actually work well on crappy embedded hardware, or the drive is marginal.
posted by majick at 9:36 PM on March 27, 2009

DVD-ROM is a data format (like CDi and CD-ROM). What you think of as "DVDs" aren't DVD-ROM format.

Not true. A video DVD uses the same on-disc format (UDF) as a data DVD; it just has a specific set of files stored on it that contain the video and menu data. This is different to the situation with CDs, where audio CDs use a different on-disc format (Red Book audio) to data CDs (ISO9660).

So it won't play DVD-ROM disks but it will play DVDs. I'm confused.

Saying that the player supports MP3 CDs but not CD-ROMs makes equally little sense. I suspect what they were trying to say is just that the player can't do anything useful with CD-ROMs that don't contain any MP3s, or with DVD-ROMs that don't contain video data.
posted by narge at 1:25 AM on March 28, 2009

As for why certain DVDs don't play: what majick said. Either the physical media are damaged or generally crappy, or the discs violate the DVD standards as an attempt at extra copy protection, or the player itself is dirty, damaged or just not very good.
posted by narge at 1:34 AM on March 28, 2009

Try a slower burn speed.
posted by knowles at 1:40 AM on March 28, 2009

Some cheaper players won't properly play dual layer discs.
posted by Caviar at 4:32 AM on March 28, 2009