Burning Movies to a CD-R and Playing Them on a DVD Player

is there any way to burn a MPG or AVI to CD-R and watch it on a DVD player?

 

You can make either a VCD (80' in a 80' CD-R, a movie has to be split in 2 CDs) http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/110106 and http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/dvd2vcd_with_smart_dvd2avi_tmpgenc.cfm
[avoid reading the DVD ripping part (Smartripper for DVD -> VOB) and substitute 'VOB -> MPG with DVD2AVI + TMPGenc' <-> 'AVI -> MPG with TMPGenc'] or a SVCD (If your DVD player supports SVCDs, look at its instruction. 55' in a 80' CD-R, 2 or 3 CDs are needed; I prefer to apply this only to very good AVIs and movies < 110') http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/dvd2svcd_with_tmpgenc.cfm
[again, avoid reading the DVD ripping (Smartripper for DVD -> VOB) part and substitute 'VOB -> MPG with DVD2AVI + TMPGenc' <-> 'AVI -> MPG with TMPGenc'] .
You could also make a KVCD (140' per CD-R) http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/124272 but for me the quality is a little worse ( http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/126073 )

Please note: lot of people think (or simply ignore (S)VCDs) that making a DVD from a 600-700 MB AVI gives a beautiful result and love making AVI --> DVD even for doing this much more time is needed. I hate this 'common belief'. Since garbage in = garbage out, often making a SVCD or even a VCD movie from an average quality's AVI gives the same results (apart the 'splitting' of the movie in more CDs).