Some DVDs don't play?
Archives Forums/MacOS X Discussion/Some DVDs don't play?
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| I'm trying to watch DVDs on my Mac with VLC media player, but some won't play. The DVD reader sounds like it is trying hard, then gives up an some kind of yellow warning triangle appears next to the DVD name in VLC. I can't see any text to indicate what the error is. Should I be able to play all DVDs, and what is the remedy? |
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| Region problem perhaps? Make sure your DVD's are of the same region as the DVD drive. |
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| Yeah, I thought that right after I posted. Thanks HtBaa, that appears to be it. Now how to solve the problem... |
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| First thing to do is to check the disc for scratches and fingerprints, and clean if necessary. Secondly: Are they actual commercial DVD's, or burned DVD-R discs? If the latter, it could be substandard media or a mediocre burning. Sometimes you can end up with bad discs if you burn either too high or low a speed, depending on the drive and media used. |
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| Yeah, I thought that right after I posted. Thanks HtBaa, that appears to be it. Now how to solve the problem... Use a 3rd party player that ignores the region coding bit... Which pretty much rules out anything created by the big corporations like Apple/Sony/etc. since doing so violates the DVD standards and agreements. |
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| use vlc player To stress an overused internet meme: *facepalm* The ability to read is obviously a long-lost art... @ John Galt: You can check whether it's really a region code problem when you try to open the DVD with Apple's own player at least once. When the region code of the DVD and your drive is not the same, you'll get a dialog offering you to change the region code. |
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| When the region code of the DVD and your drive is not the same, you'll get a dialog offering you to change the region code. Word of warning: Most DVD hardware will only allow you to change the region code a very limited number of times, typically somewhere in between 1-5 times. It gets written in non-volatile memory in the drive hardware somewhere each time it gets changed, and after to many switches it's permanently locked to whatever region you set last. (It allows for several changes for people moving from one zone into another, but since the whole point of region locking is that people can't just buy discs from outside of their own zone they won't just let you keep switching it back and forth any time you want to play a different disc) |
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