Tong Family

DVDplusRW.org – The ultimate unofficial DVD RW resource siteHere are some notes on why you can’t see DVD+RW on certain players…
Any DVD player should be able to play back a DVD+RW disc, after identifying it. However, some DVD players falsly assume that, after identifying a disc as not being a dual layered DVD-ROM (which is the case for example when a DVD+RW disc is loaded), that there must be a single, fully reflective layer on the disc. These players then start looking for this fully reflective layer, which is not present, and then claim that there is a disc error, or that no disc is loaded in the drive.
These players are physically capable of reading the lower reflective layer of a DVD+RW disc (which after all is equal to the layer on a dual layered DVD-ROM disc), but will not start looking for it because they assume a fully reflective layer must be there.
Thankfully, a work-around has been made available to fool these non-standard behaving players to read DVD+RW discs. Instead of writing a DVD+RW identification bitsetting to the disc, a DVD-ROM bitsetting is being written. When such a disc is loaded into these players, they start looking for either one of the two possible reflectivity parameters of a disc, and will then successfully read the disc after recognizing the lower reflectivity layer.
The DVD+RW Command-line Bitset Utility can be used by any DVD+RW that is equiped with at least version 1.37 of the firmware. It can only be used in Windows NT, 2000 or XP, but not in Windows 95, 98 or Me.
You can also change the default value of the DVD+RW drive for as long as your Windows session is active. When you change the setting of the drive, the DVD+RW drive will write to blank DVD+RW discs in this mode, no matter the software, until manually changed by this utility, or the computer is rebooted. However, if the DVD+RW disc had been originally formatted or written to in a different mode, this original mode will be retained for the disc, until it is reformatted again.
To change the setting of the DVD+RW drive to the DVD-ROM standard , enter:
dvdplusrwbitset -dvd-rom-spec -unit d:
To change the setting of the DVD+RW drive back to the default value , enter:
dvdplusrwbitset -dvd+rw-spec -unit d: