Page 1 of Wharfedale M5 not playing DVD-R

Hi all,

I know this is an old machine, but our pride and joy in the lounge.
Anyway, just starting making DVDs, home movies etc. onto DVD-R (Tescos) and they won`t play on this machine, though most sites state it does play DVD-R format.
These discs work fine in the kids playroom (YAMADA) and kitchen portable DVD TV (LODOS).
Any ideas, is the machine just too old, upgraded to the cheapest at Argos or Amazon for £25?
Is it the media, though I have tried a couple of other sample DVD-R media to no avail.
Thanks
Bunnster

can nobody help or give me advice on this problem?

Bunnster

I have two of these excellent machines. One of them I found on the local household waste dump earlier this month, took it home and fixed it. (There was a sound fault - the sound was weak and crackly. Diode D300 on the microprocessor board had gone high resistance.)
There are 3 versions of the Wharfedale M5 - the first version (serial number 122xxx) is fitted with an Afreey metal-cased DVD-ROM drive; the later versions (s/n 127xxx / 128xxx) have a Sampo DVD reader made of plastic. I have one of each drive. The Afreey drive is marginal at reading DVD-R discs - only some brands of disc work, and not all the time. The Sampo drive does a bit better and will read most DVD-R, but neither drive will read DVD+-RW. The way forward is to replace the DVD drive with one that can read recordable DVDs better.
DVD drive swapping is described in great depth at the excellent Area450 website http://www.area450.com
I used a Hitachi GD-2000 2x DVD-ROM drive that I pulled out of a scrap computer at the dump. Cost = FREE! It can read both DVD-R and RW discs, giving the Wharfedale M5 a new lease of life in the recordable DVD age. You could buy a new DVD-ROM drive, or you could get a cheap or free secondhand one from someone who has upgraded their PC recently. See Area450 for a list of suggested DVD drives to use.
Note - I replaced the DVD drive in the Wharfedale M5 with the Afreey loader. It`s the same shape as a normal DVD-ROM drive so the operation is relatively easy. If yours has the plastic Sampo loader, it`s a bit more tricky but still possible.
Repairing the player was well worth it. It has on-board Dolby Digital and DTS decoders, which the new cheap players don`t have. I use mine with a 5.1 speaker system originally designed for a PC, but it plugs in to the M5 and sounds great.
If you`re feeling adventurous, you can even upgrade the M5 with One Firmware For All . This allows you to add a hard drive, turning your old DVD player into a multimedia jukebox, with gigabytes of MP3 JPEG and MPEG files available at the touch of a button.
So I would advise you to to fix your player rather than buy a new one. But if you really can`t be bothered, don`t throw it away, offer it to someone on here first.

Hamid,

S/N starts 1273 so the Sampo drive :-( So in theory I should be having more luck with the DVD-R media?

So maybe not so easy to replace the DVD drive as it is the Sampo?

Thanks for your help, very useful.

When I can get the CyberHome machine for £19.99 from Amazon......

Bunnster