strange occurance with old dvd players.

i burn a lot of movies and ive used several different brands of dvds and this is what ive noticed.
if i use a sony dvd, fairly new dvd players can only play about the first half of the movie, and then it simply stops like theres a massive error on the disk or something. if you look at the bottom you can notice clear and distinct bands of data written to it. if the same dvd is placed into a brand new dvd player, in this case it was a 1080p up scaler or something it plays through just fine, it doesnt even skip or freeze or studder through the troublesome halfway mark.

if i use a memorex dvd it will play just fine on our somewhat outdated dvd players and on the new one i mentioned earlier, and if you look at the bottom it appears to be completely uniform with no visible bands like the sony ones produce. so i thought maybe i had a bad batch of dvds from sony or something and it took a really good dvd player to read through it, but then i placed a movie burned to a memorex dvd into a player that looks like it came out simultaniously with the first dvd. it has an external computer fan screwed into the back, a 5 disc changer, and an orange led display on the front, not the newer blue color every single piece of hardware comes with now, and the movie played exactly like the sony dvd did in my other player, it stopped halfway through.

i have a couple movies that are on maxell dvds, and i havent really tried them all but i have 1 that will play all the way through completely fine on the ancient player.

so, whats up with that? do these companies have their own method of producing dvds? is there no standard to this sort of thing? and what does this have to do with the age of my dvd players?
id love to hear your feedback on this, please and thank you.