Perhaps cleaning the data surface of the disc with a cd cleaner kit with a solution from a dollar store or cleaning it with a mild detergent solution and then drying it may help.

You can archive the VIDEO_TS folder for win 7 use or create an image that can be mounted in win10 later without an extra disc utility.

Quote You can archive the VIDEO_TS folder for win 7 use or create an image that can be mounted in win10 later without an extra disc utility.

I have been archiving the VIDEO_TS folders from all my old DVDs but, of course, can't with this one unless or until I can get the PC to read it.

I'll try a clean but to my eye the surface looks pristine. Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64

As expected the clean made no difference. I suppose I could try getting a cleaning kit for the optical drives but I don't have any great hope for that either.

I'm really hoping someone can suggest a way of accessing the files using the Samsung player. Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64

To answer your specific question, see this link: https://www.amazon.com/Capture-Streaming-Broadcasting-Conference-Teaching/dp/B09FLN63B3/ref=asc_df_B09FLN63B3?tag=bingshoppinga-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80333187606936&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4583932715431388&psc=1 . Scroll down the page to ‘Looking for specific info? and type in ‘standalone dvd player’ and you’ll get the answer you are looking for. It should work.

PC software can cause problems in reading a DVD. See this recent link: https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/118665.page#post_box_446674 . One software sees the disk as blank and another software sees the same disc correctly as having data and plays properly using windows software. I am using win 11. They key may be to slow the drive reading speed down

I knew back then when win 98 and xp may have problems reading a cd/dvd drive if it also is spinning too fast. Utilities such as Nero drive speed with an aspi manager can be used to slow the drive read speed down to 1x speed. See this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20070321024628/http://www.cdspeed2000.com/download.html . I don’t have win xp anymore and don’t know if these free utilities will work with your win 7.

Hoping that users with optical disc experience will chime in with their knowledge on what they do to fix the problem of disc reads. I have disassembled drives in the past to clean and lubricate them like when a stick on paper disc label (popular in the past) disintegrated at a high spin speed of 52X. Dollar stores sell CD drive lens cleaners but I don’t want to use them on an optical drive if I can’t control the spin speed. Too fast may damage the drive. You may want to do some research on your own optical drives if those dvd are valuable to you.

Thank you for that information tomasc. The HDMI capture device looks interesting although the description doesn't seem to make clear exactly how it works. Does it contain a microSD card?. At the moment I have another possible solution. I have an old Panasonic DVD recorder with a hard drive and it appears to be possible to copy a DVD to the HD. If it can read my DVD I should be able to copy to the hd then burn a new one from that which will hopefully be readable on at least one of my PCs. It's a bit long-winded but uses assets I already have to hand. The only problem is after 9 years I have to re-learn how to use it. Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64

The Panasonic DVD recorder is an excellent solution. I have an earlier model that Barry mentions that he uses as Time Base Corrector for bad videotapes as a pass-thru. You have nailed it. 1, 2, and 4 hours on a single sided DVD-R are also of excellent quality. Do you have the model number of the unit you have? They sell for a lot of money on ebay.

It's a DMR-EX89EB. I agree it's potentially a very good solution - providing it still works and can read my disc and that a disc burned on it can be read on my PC. There's many a slip . . . . . Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64

That was a bit of a disaster. I set it copying and left it. when I returned the image on the TV was frozen and I could hear the DVD drive cycling. The unit wouldn't respond to the remote control or the buttons on the front. I turned it off at the wall overnight and this morning when I powered it up it sat with "Pleae Wait" flashing on the display and it still wouldn't respond to the front panel buttons. I've ended up having to dismantle it to get my disc out.

Back to the drawing board . . . . . .

Edit: I should have been more patient. After I reassembled the drive I powered it up again and eventually the flashing message went away.

I decided to see what, if anything, had been recorded on the hard drive. It turned out that it had recorded right up to the point of failure. At a particular point the recording started to break up and freeze. When I played the DVD in the Samsung player I found the exact place at which the TV image had frozen and this was several minutes further on so the Panasonic had been struggling to read the disc for some time before it finally threw it's wobbly.

It's obvious the disc is degraded, either due to age or perhaps to using too high a burn speed originally. Unfortunately the footage that I particularly need to recover is beyond the point at which the Panasonic failed so it now looks as though I'm going to have to try some way of recording the output of the Samsung. Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64

Finally I've managed to capture the footage I need. I eventually chose the HDMI-USB capture device in the link provided by tomasc. Many thanks for that. I found the same one in the UK branch of Amazon.

Needless to say it wasn't straightforward. The first problem was that the USB plug on the device was so loose in the socket on my PC that it disconnected whilst Windows was loading the driver so it didn't install properly. I had to wedge it in with a strip of paper and then remove and re-install the driver.

I then found the Power Director Capture module couldn't see it so I had to try to install an open-source program, OSB Studio, cited in the device instruction sheet, only to find the current version only works on Windows 10 and 11. So I then had to get the device driver and OBS Studio installed on my laptop, then finally I was able to capture the video. It took a further couple of tries before I found the correct settings in OBS Studio.

Thanks again to tomasc for the assistance. It's been a frustrating journey but success at last. Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64