How come my DVD doesnt play in my DVD player..?

Question

i have full length movies on my computer and there .avi files so i went and bought DVD+R and i burned them to a DVD but they wont play in my DVD player but they will play in my computer, why is that, or do i need to convert them to diffrent file types to play them in a standard DVD player, please help thanks

Answer 1

some dvd players dont play copyed dvds converting wont work ive tryed it

Answer 2

.avi files are not true DVD files. DVD audio/video is in the format .vob. (Put a DVD in your computer and look in the VIDEO_TS folder and you will see numerous .vob files.)

Your computer plays the .avi files because it has an avi decoder in whatever program you are using to view them.

Some newer DVD players can play SOME .avi files when burned to a disc. These DVD players will usually say "DiVX compatible" on them or the box they came in. It is not a sure bet though because there are many generations of DiVX, and not all .avi files are in the DiVX format anyway.

It is kind of confusing, but .avi is not actually a format in itself. It is a way to package a video and audio stream together to be played at the same time (see the linked article for more info). Many different types of video and audio streams are supported, and most programs (like Windows Media Player) will support many of these audio/video combinations, so it is transparent to you what exact type of video format is being used in your .ave files when you play them on your computer. Hardware players (like DVD players) are much less flexible than software players (like Windows Media Player) and only support very specific types of audio/video streams.

EDIT:

By the way, trying to just copy .vob files from a DVD to your computer and then burning them to a disc won't work. That is part of the DVD protection scheme. To do this you have to use a computer program to break the protection scheme. Since this is technically illegal getting such a program is not as straight forward as buying, for example, a copy of Windows. They are out there, though. (2nd link)