DVD Movies Won't Play

QuintessentialB · Nov 3, 2010

I have a iMac G4 Super Drive and I can't seem to get the DVD player to play or recognize the movie once it's in the drive. The CD player works just fine I can control the drive from the iTunes program, but the DVD player will not respond.

vansmith · Nov 3, 2010

Have you tried playing the DVD with another program such as VLC? Is the disc damaged? Have you tried multiple DVDs?

chas_m · Nov 4, 2010

And you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, by way of verification with system profiler, that you do in fact HAVE a superdrive?

dtravis7 · Nov 4, 2010

Going along with Chas's post, not all iMac G4's had Superdrives. What are the specs of your iMac G4? Screen Size? CPU speed?

QuintessentialB · Nov 4, 2010

chas_m said:
And you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, by way of verification with system profiler, that you do in fact HAVE a superdrive?

Serial #QP41302XQB8

I'm positive! I got the machine from Penn State University or maybe Superdisk?

QuintessentialB · Nov 4, 2010

dtravis7 said:
Going along with Chas's post, not all iMac G4's had Superdrives. What are the specs of your iMac G4? Screen Size? CPU speed?

Machine Name: iMac
Machine Model: PowerMac6,3
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (3.3)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.25 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.7.8f1
Serial Number: QP41302XQB8
Hard Drive: 160 Gb

vansmith · Nov 4, 2010

Powermac6,3 does have a SuperDrive. It is at this point that I return to my original post -
Have you tried playing the DVD with another program such as VLC? Is the disc damaged? Have you tried multiple DVDs?

QuintessentialB · Nov 4, 2010

vansmith said:
Powermac6,3 does have a SuperDrive. It is at this point that I return to my original post -
Have you tried playing the DVD with another program such as VLC? Is the disc damaged? Have you tried multiple DVDs?

I've tried several different DVD's in the Apple DVD Player version 4.6.5 I get an error message "Supported disk is not available". What is VLC? I'm a newbie!

vansmith · Nov 4, 2010

VLC

If you go to  > About This Mac > More Info... > Hardware > ATA, what does it have listed for your optical drive?

dtravis7 · Nov 4, 2010

For sure the 1.25Ghz iMac has a Superdrive or at least DVD drive. It was the first 700Mhz 15" that did not.

There is a possibility that the drive has issues. It's an old machine. Drives die. I get PC's to work on all the time with DVD drives that will not even read a DVD.

QuintessentialB · Nov 4, 2010

vansmith said:
VLC

If you go to  > About This Mac > More Info... > Hardware > ATA, what does it have listed for your optical drive?

SONY DVD RW DW-U10A:

Model: SONY DVD RW DW-U10A
Revision: A43i
Serial Number: FA146F44
Detachable Drive: No
Protocol: ATAPI
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal

QuintessentialB · Nov 4, 2010

dtravis7 said:
For sure the 1.25Ghz iMac has a Superdrive or at least DVD drive. It was the first 700Mhz 15" that did not.

There is a possibility that the drive has issues. It's an old machine. Drives die. I get PC's to work on all the time with DVD drives that will not even read a DVD.

But the drive does read CD's and plays music CD's it just won't read DVD's.

SONY DVD RW DW-U10A:

Firmware Revision: A43i
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipped/Supported)
Cache: 8192 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO
Media: No

dtravis7 · Nov 4, 2010

The original Superdrive in my iMac G5 iSight started to fail first by not Writing DVD's then it would not READ DVD's but CD's worked just fine.

QuintessentialB · Nov 4, 2010

dtravis7 said:
The original Superdrive in my iMac G5 iSight started to fail first by not Writing DVD's then it would not READ DVD's but CD's worked just fine.

Did you change it out or pay someone to do it? I have built several PC before is this something that I can do? I know I will need Arctic Sliver thermal grease for the heat sink once the machine is opened up..

dtravis7 · Nov 5, 2010

No, am a long time computer tech. Also the iMac G5, even the last iSight model I own, is way easier to work on than the Lampshade

iMacs. In my case it was just getting the front off and apple put two locks that needed this special Apple Tool! I made my OWN Apple Tool!

After the front comes off, easy as can be.

I am just taking a guess that the drive is dying, but at that age I would not be all that surprised if it was.

QuintessentialB · Nov 7, 2010

dtravis7 said:
No, am a long time computer tech. Also the iMac G5, even the last iSight model I own, is way easier to work on than the Lampshade iMacs. In my case it was just getting the front off and apple put two locks that needed this special Apple Tool! I made my OWN Apple Tool!
After the front comes off, easy as can be.

I am just taking a guess that the drive is dying, but at that age I would not be all that surprised if it was.

Thanks dtravis7! I too am a PC Tech and although I have never worked on/with Apple computers I went ahead and changed the drive. I had an extra DVD burner so I took off the face plate and installed it and now I can watch/burn DVD's. For some reason I expected it to be much more difficult than it was. Now I'm really hooked on Macs... thanks for everything!

DVD Movies Won't Play

QuintessentialB

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chas_m

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dtravis7

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vansmith

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dtravis7

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