Macbook Combo Drive? DVD-R? Help!

Hi there, I bought the low end Macbook recently which just has the combo drive. I can't seem to find a definitive answer anywhere to my question of what this drive can read.

All I can find is that is reads DVD's and CD's including R and RW.

Does the combo drive read DVD-R and RW, even though it can't burn them?

I thought I had read somewhere before I bought this mac that even though it didn't have the ability to burn onto blank dvd media, it could still read them?

Does anybody know? If its meant to read them then mine is faulty, cos it just spits them out at the minute?!

If the media is blank, there's nothing to read... It ought to read a DVD-R/RW WITH data on it, at least as far as I know.

The discs I'm trying to read do have data on them... the problem is that I can't even acess the drive, when I load a DVD-R it makes some funny noises then spits the dvd out again. It reads CDs fine.

I thought it was supposed to read DVD-R's but can't find anything on the apple website that I can download to fix this problem? This is the first time I have tried to load a DVDr in my mac, so as far as I know its never worked. I've tried 3/4 different brands and a DVD-RW also, with no joy!

This is the info displayed by system profiler, so I'm guessing it should be reading my DVD-R's?

HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-S10N:

Firmware Revision: AC06
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipped/Supported)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw
Media: No

I have checked again and it appears the mac won't read dvds of any kind now, writable or just a regular purchased film dvd.

What do I do?

Sounds like the drive is failing; there are two separate lasers in there (afaik), one for reading/burning CDs and one for reading DVDs... it's possible that the diode for the DVD laser is dying.

Are you within the 1-year warranty? If not, do you have AppleCare?

If you're still under warranty, send it in!

I'm not far from an Apple store in London... should I go there first?

Yes, take it to the Apple store, if it's ejecting all DVDs then it's faulty.