As Ted mentioned, it would seem to be that my machines are suspect.
I bought one of those "test" DVDs that has the tiny brushes on it to clean the laser lense. (BTW...are these things any good or a $21 load of hooie?) I ran the thing thru both machines but to no avail.

Tell me...the "too sensitve" or "too unforgiving" thought crossed my mind. These machines at Radio Shack were cheap. Two were under $100! I paid $700 for the Phillips recorder/player and $250 for the sony combination player. That was the cheapest one I could find (at the time) that read both + and - formats.