Burning onto DVD

hello to all you experts!
i'm fairly new to this and i want to know if there is a way i can burn the tv
shows i download onto to dvd so that they will play on my ordinary, run of the
mill dvd player (nothing fancy or expensive). i thought this may be the best
place to ask. also if you happen to have answers please answer in english (not
too much tech speak). thanks so much. i love eztv!

i'm no expert but if your dvd/player will play divx/xvid.
then i should play the xvid shows you d/l as long as you get the (hdtv xvid)
normaly 350 meg ones.
the (hr hdtv xvid) normally 700 meg will be to high of res for a standard
player.

if not your going to have to re-encode to (vcd) or (svcd) or (dvd).

just look at your player and it will say (divx) or (mpeg 4) if so it should
work for you.

if that doesn't help may be put on your player make, and model.
someone might be able to let you know if it will play d/loaded tv shows for
you.

hope that helps.

bye for now (si)(uk) :-)

alternatively, if your player does not play divx, just head over to torrentspy
(do a search in google for it as i'm not sure if i'm allowed to provide a link)
and search for a program called convertxtodvd. a great program that will allow
you to quickly burn the programs to a dvd that will play in most, if not all
players.

hope that helps. 🙂

hi:

i strongly urge you not to convert the programs you download.

instead, use a program like nero to burn them as regular data dvds. with a
fast system you can burn a dvd with perhaps 10 hours of programs in 10 minutes
or so. converting these to regular dvds would take hours.

then i suggest you buy a new relatively cheap divx certified dvd player. i
have three of them, the yahoo ydp-540 ($49,99 can), a diamond vision dvp-816
($39.95) and the philips dvp-642/37 (an older divx player to avoid now
regardless of the price). there are many others but look for a player with
the divx symbol on it. these players will play most of the files you download
directly without conversion. i would avoid the older philips dvp-642 as it
does not play as wide a variety of files as the newer models.

you might want to take your disk to the store and test the player you want to
buy. please understand that the cheaper players often play a greater range of
files.

please just say no to converting when ever possible. i keep encountering
people who tying up their computers for most of the time converting downloaded
programs for months on end and this is just a waste of time.

best wishes, marm

i use a program called avi2dvd. it is ok, but it takes a long time to convert
and it is not the easiest program to learn.

i tried convertxtodvd but after all the time converting when it started to
burn the dvd i got this error:

write error at 0 (16) - code 02 30 11 [not ready]
media removed. burning layer not ready to write

i'm even using maxell dvds (which from what i've gathered is a good quality
dvd). anybody know what i'm doing wrong? i'd rather not buy a new dvd player
(even a cheap one). but if there aren't any solutions to my problem i guess
i'll do that.

convertxtodvd is awesome.

i have used it alot of times now.

i had to update my firmware of my dvdrw though. make sure you get the right on
for your drive if not, its fuxxed!

don't bother. like a few people have said, buy a divx player (it plays dvd's as
well, and looks exactly like a normal dvd player, but it is basically a small
processor attached to a linux system with a dvd-drive in - ie, a simple
computer in a box that can only do one thing - play disks)

amazon sell them. i had a yamada. you won't always recognise the names, but
don't let that put you off. yamada are great as you can get firmware updates
(the software that runs the machine) via the net, burn onto disk and update the
machine when different codecs come out. you are kind of future proofing (to
some degree) yourself.

the last divx player i saw was on...savastore, i think. it was

how do i go about updating my firmware? i'm not a big tech person so.... any
help would be greatly appreaciated. thanks.

nero has nero vision express (easy to acquire) that'll do it for you and is
pretty quick for what it does. whenever i want to catch up on an entire
season's worth of shows, i can pop 5-6 on a dvd and just let nero do its thing;
come back in an hour and a half and it's done. yeah, you can't customize a
whole heck of a lot, but it's good enough for my tastes.

all fair and well. you make some good points. but honestly there are some strong
points to be made about converting the files to a dvd. firstly, we have four dvd
players in our house and only two of them can play divx files. converting to dvd
offers the flexibility to play the episodes on every machine in the house. and
secondly, i pass around a lot of the stuff i download to friends and having them
on dvd just means less hassle. i know everyone can play a dvd.

to be fair, i do both. i only burn to dvd the shows i know other people want or
will want and then save the rest on data dvds for the shows that i only watch.

each to his own i say. the original poster asked for a program that would do the
job and that's what he got.

not all companies offer upgrades for firmware. your best option is to just head
to the website of your manufacturer and have a look the in the support and/or
service sections and look to see if they offer them. if they do, they'll
generally have instructions as how to do it.

it's obviously a more expensive route, but i use either my laptop or my creative
zen vision: m personal video player to play my videos on tv. i use the vga cable
to connect my laptop to my lcd tv (it also has s video out, for non vga
compatible tvs). the vision: m is the only pvp that i have found that will
natively support divx and xvid. otherwise you have to go through the lengthy
conversion process. i would definitely recommend, however, purchasing an xvid
compatible dvd player, as others have suggested. unless of course you want to
spend a couple hundred dollars (us) on a vision: m (they are awesome) or a grand
or so on a laptop!

if convertxtodvd fails, then either dvdsanta or winavi should do the job fine.
just remember that the more episodes you squeeze onto a dvd, the lower the
quality will be.

true. the yamada site offers sod all (ie, nothing useful) but all the 3rd party
firmware is excellent and has loads of options.