2008 iMac External DVD/CD Player plays no movies

[gholmes1936]

iMac 2008 OS10.9.1 Samsung external dvd won't play movie DVD's. Other DVD/CD's are recognized. My internal DVD/CD player/burner stopped working 3 years ago like many other iMacs did.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bear]

iMac 2008 OS10.9.1 Samsung external dvd won't play movie DVD's. Other DVD/CD's are recognized. My internal DVD/CD player/burner stopped working 3 years ago like many other iMacs did.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

When was the last time the external drive played DVD Movies? (What OS version?) And did you try running DVD Player after inserting the disk - if so was there any sort of error message?

 

[gholmes1936]

When was the last time the external drive played DVD Movies? (What OS version?) And did you try running DVD Player after inserting the disk - if so was there any sort of error message?

Before installing Maverick, and quite awhile before that. Tried running DVDPlayer to access the movie DVD and there was no error. When I selected the DVD Icon on my desktop I could see all the data packages involved in it. When I tried using VLC I got the same thing. In another forum somewhere in the great Gore-o-sphere I read that it might be possible to use VLC to

 

[Brian33]

It's my recollection that the Apple DVD Player app doesn't work with any external DVD players in any machine that originally included a built-in DVD player. I've got an Early 2008 24" iMac, and I use an Apple external USB optical drive because I replaced the internal optical drive with a 1 TB HDD.

I recall that I made an edit to a system file that allowed the external drive to be used with DVD Player and to allow booting from it. It involved using a hex editor to a "kext" file but wasn't difficult. I'm sorry I can't check into it more at this moment -- you can try google or I'll get back here tomorrow hopefully.

I can assure you that the Apple USB Superdrive at least can be made to work with DVD Player...