[bpurvis]

Originally Posted by smurfatefrog

AFAIK some standalone DVD players definately cant play DVDs burnt as data discs, but I'd say players made in the last 12-18 months shouldnt have problems playing them

ok, i think you missed the point. go back and read my earlier post and you'll see, EVERY dvd IS a "data" disc. Its the FORMAT of that data on the disc that counts. When you burn a DVD-VIDEO compliant disc you are simply burning a data disc in the DVD-VIDEO format.

See, with audio cdrs, you can burn an audio disc which is an entirely different format from ISO-9660 (data/CD-ROM,etc). The sectors are a different length i believe and there is less CRC data (error checking) for each sector since the actual data integrity isnt the issue, its the listenability.

With SHN/data discs (ISO-9660 format) there is an actual filesystem structure on the disc, with a table of contents, etc. There is extra CRC information so that bad sectors can be repaired on the fly (as with audios but more of it) because the actual data integrity is the issue in this case.

This is the same with the SVCD/VCD format .There are different modes and thus sector sizes. Ever wonder why you can extract a full VCD mpeg but that same mpeg file is larger than you can burn onto a single cdr (ISO-9660) ? Its because of the smaller usuable data size of the ISO-9660 format. There is more error correcting information per sector (that you have no control over) required.

A pop here and there isnt going to ruin an audio disc, but even 1 bad bit on a
data disc could cause disaster.

ok, so accordingly, there is NO equivalent of the audio format for DVDs.
I *believe* even DVD-A (DVD audio) discs are simply the audio files dropped into the AUDIO_TS folder on the disc. (Could be wrong here).

check this:

"Almost all DVD-Video and DVD-ROM discs use the UDF bridge format, which is a combination of the DVD MicroUDF (subset of UDF 1.02) and ISO 9660 file systems. The OSTA UDF file system will eventually replace the ISO 9660 system originally designed for CD-ROMs, but the bridge format provides backwards compatibility until more operating systems support UDF"

i got this from this link:
http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html
under section 4.2

This silly notion that there are "data" dvd discs and "video" dvd discs and they are wholly separate is wrong.