Buy a DVD player that will play VCD and SVCDs !!!
These can be picked up for under 40 quid now, and there's no gaurantee that switching to DVD+/-R disks will fix yours problems ... in fact if it doesn't play VCDs then it certainly won't like DVD+/-R disks either.
Have a look at
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/ for info on creating disks and also the
DVD Players section for which players do what.