Six months ago brought my elderly  folks a DVD recorder which suddenly refused to record any DVDs from material stored on the hard drive. Up to this point it had happily allowed them to back up their favorite movies to disc without problem. It is a multiformat machine that happily would copy to DVD-R or DVD+R and the double layrer ones plus DVDram.
It would also not play any discs it had previously burnt that it had played fine up to this point. Strangely it would play commercially recorded discs. All pretty weird. Well under the 5 year extended warranty off it went to be repaired. The local agent said it had a problem in the DVD ram memory but now 3 weeks later the repair outlet it was sent to said there was nothing wrong with it but that you could only use PANASONIC DISCS in it as panasonic dvd recoders dont accept other discs. He even tried to sell my 75 year old parents the discs over the phone for a princely sum.

Odd that it would accept any and all for 6 months. Any one know if Panasonics are own brand specific in terms of the discs you can put in them or if these guys are talking rubbish. Were not talking fancy DVD ram just simple one time recordeable DVDs. My folks tried to get info from their local electronics shop but the floor staff didnt have a clue as per usual.
Much Thanks for any insights.