I have some DVDs that have 5 hours recorded on a (one-sided) disk. One player skips and hangs up. The other doesn’t miss a beat. Allowing for the fact that that’s a lot to scrunch on one side, why would one player have a problem over another? (Both are by major manufacturers.)
There’s definitely some variation between DVD players, even of the same make.
We have one Sony player that’s about seven years old, and one Sony that’s about three years old. When I make a DVD in iMovie, the newer one plays it at EXTREMELY HIGH VOLUME, so you have to turn the sound way, way down to make it manageable; this results in a dramatic and annoying loss of sound quality. The older player, along with every other DVD player I’ve tried this on, plays the sound at the normal, expected level. I can’t figure it out.
Sorry I have only anecdotal, non-technical input.
I just got a DVR-R in the mail today. My newer higher end OPPO player won’t play it. My older inexpensive SONY plays it fine. Go figure.
The amount of content on the disc might be a problem… IIRC, some players have trouble with video bit rates below 2000 kbps, and squeezing 5 hours onto a single sided, single layer DVD-R with a 224 kbps audio track gives you about 1750 kbps on average for the video.
Or it could be that the other player isn’t designed for reading DVD-R media. Does it skip when you play other burned discs?