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DVD player not recognised on Tiger - newbie needs emergency help!

S

slim tim slide

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 12, 2008
28
0
brighton
Ive just gotten a 2nd hand eMac G4 800Mhz running OSX 10.4.1 when I put a dvd in to play nothing happens - the appliactaions folder says I have a dvd player (occupying 38 odd MG of space) but when I try to opn it i get this message ¨There was an initialization error. A valid vieo device could not be found for playback (-70017)

does this mean i cant watch dvd´s??? do i need to download new software? i am a complete novice and would really appreciate some help here... thanks in advance
 
hi, thanks for replying - i have tried music discs and they open in i-tunes fine but when i insert a dvd it wont work, i just get the message i described, i wonder if the mac is lacking some piece of software?
 
dvd in finder

not sure - the dvd player application is only located in applications folder, not on the dock. as soon as i click the dvd player icon the menus are shown across the top of the screen but they are almost all shaded and i cannot open the disc drawer. also a message appears saying that the appropriate application could not be found (full message is at top of this thread). I have tried to circumvent this by opening i-tunes in order to open the drawer, insert the dvd, and then try dvd player but i get the same message. (There was an initialization error - a video device could not be located) but it does appear that there IS a dvd player located in applications! I am very confused!
 
Just wondering if there's an issue with playing dVDs on 800 mhz?

When you insert the DVD it should show up on the desktop or in a finder window under "Devices" and you should be able to see folders on the DVD. IIRC, there's Video_ts and audio_ts folders. Do you see these?
 
slim tim slide said:
Ive just gotten a 2nd hand eMac G4 800Mhz running OSX 10.4.1 when I put a dvd in to play nothing happens - the appliactaions folder says I have a dvd player (occupying 38 odd MG of space) but when I try to opn it i get this message ¨There was an initialization error. A valid vieo device could not be found for playback (-70017)

does this mean i cant watch dvd´s??? do i need to download new software? i am a complete novice and would really appreciate some help here... thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Apple made 2-models of the 800Mhz eMac.
The first (August 13, 2002 )had NVIDIA GeForce2 MX graphics and a 2X DVD-R/CD-RW "SuperDrive"
The second (May 6, 2003) had ATI Radeon 7500 graphics and a 32X CD-ROM drive.

Check System Profiler to find out which you have. If you've got the ATI version with a CD-ROM drive you're out of luck playing DVDs.
 
DewGuy1999 said:
Apple made 2-models of the 800Mhz eMac.
The first (August 13, 2002 )had NVIDIA GeForce2 MX graphics and a 2X DVD-R/CD-RW "SuperDrive"
The second (May 6, 2003) had ATI Radeon 7500 graphics and a 32X CD-ROM drive.

Check System Profiler to find out which you have. If you've got the ATI version with a CD-ROM drive you're out of luck playing DVDs.
Click to expand...

That would make sense given the OP's remark about "no valid video device for output". sounds like he's out of luck.
 
this is weird - the dvd does appear on the desktop with both video and audio folders. the system profiler tells me that the machine definitely has a dvd-rw facility (pioneer DVR 104) and yet whatever dvd i put in i get the error message. opening the folders on the desktop gets me no closer to actually playing a dvd as the error message is everpresent - opening the folders just shows me whats in them, not how i can play them! normal cd´s and cd-r´s work fine. the dvd player itself is described thus: version 4.6, architecture power pc, location /applications/DVD player .app

by all appearances it should simply play a dvd but it doesn´t!

i´d like to extend a thanks to all who have made suggestions, very helpful even if so far unsuccesful.
 
Do you have OSX 10.4.1 or OSX 10.4.11?

Update your system software?

eMacs are pretty old. Optical drive are typically the first thing to go in a computer.
 
slim tim slide said:
this is weird - the dvd does appear on the desktop with both video and audio folders. the system profiler tells me that the machine definitely has a dvd-rw facility (pioneer DVR 104) and yet whatever dvd i put in i get the error message. opening the folders on the desktop gets me no closer to actually playing a dvd as the error message is everpresent - opening the folders just shows me whats in them, not how i can play them! normal cd´s and cd-r´s work fine. the dvd player itself is described thus: version 4.6, architecture power pc, location /applications/DVD player .app

by all appearances it should simply play a dvd but it doesn´t!

i´d like to extend a thanks to all who have made suggestions, very helpful even if so far unsuccesful.
Click to expand...

As Consultant questioned are you running 10.4.1 or 10.4.11, if it's 10.4.1 you should use Software Update to update to 10.4.11. I'm running 10.4.11 and my version of DVD Player is 4.6.5. If your's is only 4.6 then it also needs to be updated. When you got this eMac did it have a fresh install of the OS on it? Did you do a fresh install? If not it's possible that a piece of the necessary software is either corrupted or even missing. I would also second getting VLC to see if it will work or not.
 
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