"Jim" wrote in message
...

.mp3 files will play in a CD drive as easialy as CDA.

That's true for modern CD players and modern computers. But there's a lot of
technology behind that. And, there's a lot of less capable legacy hardware
out there.

There's so much mixed-format media out there that coming up with competent
players can be non-trivial.

I just went through a little challenge at church where we had a troublesome
DVD-R from a supposedly technically competent source - namely Willow Creek
Church.

In the end the only DVD player in the church of about 8, and my two
stand-alone players at home that would play it was a brand new $29.95 "Coby"
that someone literally bought almost by accident for a different purpose.

Computer players were equally split, about half would play it, and about
half wouldn't.

Some of the players were legacy DVD players from the early days of DVD, but
some were less than a year old.

One was a DVD recorder that was about mine which is a Phillips/Magnavox that
is about 6 months old. You'd think that an almost-new DVD recorder could
play just about any DVD-R around. Instead, it put up "disk error" in its
display and literally spewed the offending disc out. :-(