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What reason could a DVD play on a PS4 but not a DVD player?

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I bought a DVD from eBay not knowing it was a bootleg. Since this is really hard to find, I decided to keep it anyway. However, it doesn’t play on my DVD player. It does play on my brother’s PS4. I would like to fix it so that it will play on my DVD player, or I would like to buy a new DVD player that it will work on. Or possibly get an external disk drive for my laptop. I just want to bounce information and ideas off someone that knows more than I do because I don’t want to throw money around if it doesn’t work.

This is some information that may help you help me. I’m not sure what you need to know. I’ll answer any question, of course.

• This DVD player plays other DVDs no problem.
• The DVD player is region 1, not region free.
• I don’t know if the PS4 is region locked or not.
• I was told the DVD was region-free. (It may not be, I’ve been lied to before)
• The DVD was burned on a DVD-R not RW or anything.

I hope I put this in the right forum and I hope what I intend to do is clear. If this was on reddit I’d probably title this “I’m a dumbass trying to work a DVD player AMA.”

Topic

“The DVD was burned on a DVD-R not RW or anything.”

In reply to What reason could a DVD play on a PS4 but not a DVD player?

Right there is your best clue. Home made media can be hit or miss on other players. How old is this DVD player? I’m seeing more and more … fade away.

I’m not kidding you. The DVD Laser dims. Dust can get on the lens and then you have burnt media.

You can try DVD+R, DVD-R and reduce the recording speed if you want to keep trying. Me? At the office where we have some promo DVD playing on repeat we replace the player after the usual lens cleaning and trying another (slow) burn.

Great recomendation!

In reply to “The DVD was burned on a DVD-R not RW or anything.”

Thanks for the help! My laptop has no disk drive of any kind. I wanted a cheap one but wasn’t sure which ones would actually work. Cheap is, a lot of times just that, cheap. I appreciate the recommendation. I wouldn’t mind have a digital copy on a thumb drive or something. My TV has a spot for one, so that would let me play it anywhere.

Thanks again!

In regards to throwing money around.

In reply to What reason could a DVD play on a PS4 but not a DVD player?

If the DVD was recorded one could simply walk into Mordor.

That is, there are fine FREE apps to convert this from optical media to some .ISO file that you can play on your laptop without having to get the laptop a DVD drive.

-> But here’s a real problem. No one can give you a 100% sure thing or reply that always works. This is the way of optical media. You will, someday run into something that doesn’t work. And the fix is not going to be always a sure thing.

But here at the office we bought a 10 pack of USB DVDRW drives for the storeroom as they were cheap and we know that once in a while someone in the office will need to get access to or create optical media.

Figure 20 or so dollars out there for the usual DVDRW drive. Example:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/USB-2-0-IDE-Portable-Slim-Slot-in-External-8X-DVDRW-DVD-24X-CD-RW-ROM-Drive-Reader-Writer-Burner-M-Disc-for-Apple-PC-Mac-Laptop-Desktop/716382647

Region code might be the problem.

In reply to What reason could a DVD play on a PS4 but not a DVD player?

The problem may be due to region code. Another way I can think of is to rip your DVD. A DVD ripper always can bypass region code restrictions and convert DVD to a digital file.

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