I have been using this machine for nearly three years. Despite the quality of DVD recordings being usually excellent I have found the machine generally unpredictable and frustrating. I have encountered similar problems to the one you mention. They include:
- timer recordings sometimes fail to start
- DVD disk is often corrupted and unplayable after recording
- recorder automatically writes information to disk before ejecting but fails to create disk menu successfully
- recorder does not recognise DVD disk when inserted, and wipes the recording
All the above DVD errors seem to occur when using DVD+RW and DVD+R disks, and/or using the recorder in VR mode, which suggests there is a problem with the automatic disk finalisation process. The advanced features of DVD+ do not appear to be correctly implemented in VR mode on this machine, perhaps indicating an internal software problem. Surely Sony should by now have released a firmware update?
Changing to DVD-RW and DVD-R disks only, and changing the default format mode to Video instead of VR, seems to resolve all these issues. Disk finalisation, when performed manually on disks recorded in Video mode, works normally; such disks are also no longer corrupted or automatically erased. I would recommend this workaround to anyone having similar problems with this machine.
