DVD s reading CD-R s and CD-RW s

I use Memorex media and have no problems with the Sony DVP-7700.

My Pioneer reads CD R only. Read CDV, DVD, VCD and CDs, no CD RW though

My Pioneer DV525 has read all brands of CDR's fed it. I have not tried CDRW's. It did pop a bit on a computer generated CD, though. I should admit they were burned on Pioneer machines, as well.

Kthomas, what media are you using? My Sony 7700 reads some media, but not others. On some media, it won't manually advance directly to a middle index point without going into some sort of grand mal seizure.

I have been told that it is an issue of DVD's being more "shiny" and therefore requiring a weaker (or somehow different) laser to read them. CDR's and CDRW's are a lot less shiny (just have a look) and, therefore, the DVD-grade lasers often have trouble reading them. Some of the higher end DVD players will then include a dual laser design in order to have seperate lasers optimized for reading the different formats. I do not know for a fact, but I imagine that some of the players that sporadically can read some disks and not others use a DVD laser that is tweaked to somehow be more sensitive to less reflective formats. Check to see whether a particular model includes a dual laser and is designed to read all formats in question. If not, its ability to read CDR's may be hit or miss on a disk by disk basis. I have a Pioneer Elite DV-37 that is described by Pioneer as using a "Twin-Wave Laser Pickup for CD / Video CD / CD-R / CD-RW playback." I think this incorporates what I'm trying to describe. Truth be told, however, I haven't even tried a CDR in it yet as I listen to music on a seperate player. Guess I'll try it out when I get home.

My dealer told me that Pioneer is ahead in the chip technology and can read those formats. But I would try before buy. Regards.

Kthomas: Could you let us know what brand of media you are using. In my post--that's what I meant--it does work for some brands--but not all. Any that you have tried and found it to work--please let us know.

Which Sony player are you using? My DVP-7700 reads CDRs just fine, and I thought Sony was a line that did in general (obviously I'm wrong!). There are a lot of DVD players that don't, so it's definitely an issue.

This is a known problem. Your Sony will read some media--but not most. It won't even read the Sony media. At least that's for the 9000ES. I have not gotten mine to read any CD-Rs but I understand it does better with CD-RW. I have yet to try those, but will in the near future. Phillips and Pioneer do much better on this media. For more information go to www.vcdhelp.com and click on DVD players. It will bring up a compatibility list and you can search for particular players--or all players that do CD-R. The list, however, is not 100% accurate. Sony is a good example of that--it will do CD-R and RW, but not for all media. I'm still trying to find the right media--if I do I'll post it here.