Is DVD Player temperamental?
I have a slightly scratched DVD that plays fine in my Panasonic DVD player in my living room, yet it managed to crash DVD Player on my Macbook.
Is DVD Player temperamental? Is this a hardware or software problem? Or is my Macbook’s DVD drive not as good as discovering, and moving past scratches? Is the fact that my Macbook uses the same drive to install software make it more sensitive to breaks in the data stream? Is this a precautionary measure so that any software I’m trying to install (especially a new version of my operating system) does not have any troubles? If this is a known problem, wouldn’t you think that DVD Player could give me an error instead of crashing DVD Player to the point where I need to restart my Mac to regain those processing threads?
So many questions! I know next to nothing about my Macbook’s drive, the hardware inside of it, or the software it takes to pull it altogether - but I do know that a DVD that has only a small light scratch on it, shouldn’t force me to restart my computer.
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I think this is a software issue. DVD Player is terrible. The worst Apple software I’ve ever used. Buggy, crash-happy, and never reliable for any dvd.
I’m sure you have a reason why you’re not using VLC (front row maybe?) but the experience is ++ so much better.
Daniel Nicolas on January 29th, 2007 4:07 pm
While I don’t regularly watch DVDs on my MacBook Pro, I recently had the opposite experience with DVD Player.
I had a DVD that was pretty scratched, certain chapters of which refused to play in my Samsung DVD player. I popped it in my MBP and the same chapter played fine.
I guess it depends on the nature of the scratches.
That said, a DVD view definitely should not crash from hitting a few scratches. Apple should fix that problem.
Doug J on January 30th, 2007 10:49 am
Daniel Nicolas: I have VLC but rarely use it for DVD playback. Probably because I’ve not had this issue until recently. Maybe I’ll give it a shot with the same DVD and see how it comes out.
Doug J: Interesting, perhaps the scratches or disc-type might have something to do with it. Thanks for the feedback.
Colin D. Devroe on January 30th, 2007 11:18 am