I have a new Pioneer DVR-560H. When I try to burn a dvd from my harddive (e.g. a recorded Amy Winehouse tv concert) the result is a dvd that has a visible track in the center of the disc (?), and my pc says the disc is empty, so does my old dumb dvd player. Aree there some settings I have missed or is this illegal :eek: ?

Did you finalize it on the pioneer? If not, that would be the problem.

Yes, thats usually the answer: if its a DVD-R or DVD+R, it should be finalized to make it compatible with regular DVD players and PCs. To check if the recorder did this, put the disc back in your Pioneer, then press the DVD mode button, press the Home Menu button, select the Setup option, select Disc Setup, and chose the Finalize option. Arrow twice to the right and press Enter. If the disc was not finalized yet, the Pioneer will present you with a choice of 9 menu screens for the disc: pick one, and the machine will show a bar graph on screen with the words Finalizing Disc, this takes about 90 seconds. When finished it will return you to the Disc Setup screen. Press Home Menu to exit the screen, and take the DVD out of the recorder: it should now play anywhere. This takes a lot longer to describe than to do. And whenever you copy something from hard drive to DVD the machine will always ask if you want to finalize the disc after the copy is finished: if you answer "yes" (the default is "no") it goes faster than if you do it later, since you don't have to bother digging in the Setup menus.

Eraseable discs are a little different: I think the -RW needs to be finalized while +RW does not (although you can finalize it anyway if it helps). DVD-RAM discs will usually only play in the recorder, most DVD players are not compatible with DVD-RAM.

BTW some blank DVDs don't work so good in DVD recorders: they will seem to record and finalize but then not play in anything but the recorder that made them. Store-brand DVDs (Nexxtech, Staples) and even many "big name" brands like TDK, Maxell or Sony are made with a formula intended more for super-high-speed PC burners. When used in DVD/HDD recorders they can be a little "off". If you keep having problems with compatibility on DVD players, look for Verbatim blank discs at Best Buy or OfficeMax. Or order some Taiyo Yuden (TY) 8x Premium discs from online dealers like Rima, SuperMediaStore or AvenDirect.

Eraseable discs are a little different: I think the -RW needs to be finalized while +RW does not

I've never used a +RW, but my Pio 640 does not offer the option to finalize a -RW disc, and they still play just fine in my Sony megachanger, and my Oppo.

As far as I can tell, Pioneers are the only current recorders that allow independent initializing of all media types as either VR or Video mode. While this is occasionally handy, if an inexperienced user clicks around in the disc setup menu they could accidentally format a disc in ways that make it unplayable outside the recorder. The Pioneer default for write-once DVD-R and DVD+R is "Video Mode", this works like every other recorder does to create broadly-compatible discs that must be finalized before playing in other hardware. The Pioneer default for RW media is "VR mode", which is now supported by most recent player hardware that can read RW discs.

If you manually override these defaults, you can create "video mode" RW discs that would need to be finalized before playing in other hardware. Or, you could create "VR mode" write-once -R or +R discs that cannot be played except in the Pioneer. There are good reasons you might want to intentionally do this, but its uncommon and can cause problems if done accidentally. The simplest way to "undo" such a mistake is to high-speed-copy the dvd contents back onto the Pioneer hard drive (if the machine allows the HSC function, the copy will not lose any quality). Put in a fresh blank disc, and make the copy again from hard drive to new DVD. The resulting RW should play anywhere, R discs will need to be finalized first as usual. (kjbawc, you've never had to finalize an RW because you've probably never needed or bothered to override the default RW format in Disc Setup;). I mentioned it only because it does exist as a longshot reason why a Pioneer-made disc might not play on other hardware.)

Yep, you're right. I forgot to mention that my -RW discs are recorded in VR mode, since I may want to dump them back on the HDD, and edit some. Glad you mentioned it, that's an important bit of info.

On that subject, I guess I don't understand why many (most?) players will play -RW VR discs, but won't play -R VR discs

I've never used a +RW too