weird playstation problem

hokay: So I have a slim ps2 and am using the good ol' swap magic discs to play some backups (yes they're actually backups). Anyway, recently my ps2 goes to read the discs I burn and it starts to load the game but then fails. Basically I see a title screen and then I hear the disc stop spinning. Upon removing said disc (which is scratch free) I see that the laser is still on. Why the hell would the ps2's disc drive stop spinning when the laser is still trying to read data!? Anyway I've tried both Hp dvd+r 8x (burned at the slowest speed on dvd decrypter, alcohol and nero) as well as a cheap-o nameless brand I bought off ebay (also burned at the slowest speeds).

any advice on why my burns have been failing? (its not a DRE, my official discs still function flawlessly)

more importantly: what brands do you guys use - are the DVDs I'm using just   suck for game burning?

A related problem is when the lazer is not aligned properly, which causes the system to play Cd's and DvD's at variying quality. There are sites that'll give instructions to manually fix it, but it's safer to just let a professional do the job for you.