Having recently acquired a TV tuner card for my PC (Dell GX620, P4 HT, 2GB RAM, XP) I have set upon the task of converting my home movies on VHS tape into digital format and attempting to burn them on to DVD's. After two weeks and a dozen attempts, I have exactly one (1) working DVD. I have used two different utilities - Roxio Easy CD Creator 9, and Nero 7. The latter is what I'm using now, and plan to continue using.

The DISCS that have failed have had several different problems. One will not play at all. Another will play on one machine, but not another. Yet another will play for about 15 minutes and then freeze, every time. My latest attempt had my DVD player refusing to play the disc because it thought it was "dirty" but the disc was spotless. In all cases, there was no error message from the software, and all indications are that the burning process WENT off without a hitch.

As I see it, the issue must be with one of the FOLLOWING, in no particular order:

1) Faulty media
2) A bad DVD burner
3) Imperfect technology


Anyone care to weigh in with an opinion on which of these is most likely?

You did USE all the same format of blank DVDS, right?Hi Doofus, ltns, I won't be able to help you I'm only posting this because I'm stalking Comp Guy.
A question... at some point in the process do you finish up with a movie on your HDD and does it work from there?Oh no, you found me again. Better go hide somewhere else.

And Doofus, could you tell exacly where in the process the movies stop working correctly?Fed, the file on the PC works fine. The movie preview feature in both Nero and Rozio also showed no problems.

Comp Guy, all the DVD's I've been using are from the same stack. Hewlett Packard DVD-R. And it's only the finished result on the DVD itself that is failing.

The drive is a Philips SDVD8820.I suspect the burner...
Although i don't rely on them you could try one of those laser cleaning lens CD's...