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I really didn't expect this, but DVD Player now is 64-bit

casperes1996

casperes1996

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jan 26, 2014
7,664
5,847
Horsens, Denmark
I don't know if there's already been a thread about this, but here goes;

I really thought DVD Player would die... And in fact, if you search for it in Launchpad, it isn't there anymore. So I thought it was already gone. But just to be sure, I popped in a DVD, and I got very surprised. A new logo greeted me; The DVD Player followed the System Dark Mode, and what do you know? It was a 64-bit Application. I was surprised to say the least.

Now that you're at it Apple, add Blu-Ray support please.

Here's a screenshot proof. Screenshot 2018-06-08 at 01.32.54.png
 
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fisherking said:
just a logicial step, since everything's gonna be 64bit in a year...
Click to expand...

The way I see it, it would be just as logical to just kill DVD Player entirely. They removed DVD readers long ago, I suspect very few people attach external readers and they don't support Blu-Ray playback with the built-in app, so for the future you'll need a separate app to play most video content anyways. Thus, supporting the DVD Player app going forward didn't seem more logical to me than abandoning it. But I'm glad they updated it.
 
Agreed. I was really surprised they spent the time to update it. But I guess since the 2012 MBP and 2012 Mac Pro are compatible with Mojave and still have DVD drives they figured ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
OP, how did you open the drive? Is F12 working on a third party keyboard or are the commands still in the top strip?

Or is you player external and you just used the player's control?

Lou
 
flowrider said:
OP, how did you open the drive? Is F12 working on a third party keyboard or are the commands still in the top strip?

Or is you player external and you just used the player's control?

Lou
Click to expand...


The macOS controls for external drives still work. - My external drive is a bit weird. It will open when I press its physical button only if there's no disc in it. If there is a disc in it, no matter how much you press its physical button, nothing happens, and macOS needs to send the eject command for it to open.
Whilst I could put an eject button in the menu bar, I usually just select the DVD in Finder and use command-E
 
casperes1996 said:
The way I see it, it would be just as logical to just kill DVD Player entirely. They removed DVD readers long ago, I suspect very few people attach external readers and they don't support Blu-Ray playback with the built-in app, so for the future you'll need a separate app to play most video content anyways. Thus, supporting the DVD Player app going forward didn't seem more logical to me than abandoning it. But I'm glad they updated it.
Click to expand...

You'd be surprised. DVD sales are still pretty high. Plenty of places around the world where internet speeds are terrible still.

redheeler said:
The supported 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pros and 2010 / 2012 Mac Pros still have DVD drives. This might be the reason Apple decided to keep the app.
Click to expand...

Yes, the 2012 cMBP was on sale till late 2016... there would be a huge number of them out in the wild, they sold very well well into 2015.
 
casperes1996 said:
The way I see it, it would be just as logical to just kill DVD Player entirely. They removed DVD readers long ago, I suspect very few people attach external readers and they don't support Blu-Ray playback with the built-in app, so for the future you'll need a separate app to play most video content anyways. Thus, supporting the DVD Player app going forward didn't seem more logical to me than abandoning it. But I'm glad they updated it.
Click to expand...

Actually, some of us still use them. My car won't play BD so I do copy movies to be played in my car when out of town. Yes, my car has USB, etc... but the video player only works on DVD.

I have other uses for them as well...
 
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redheeler said:
The supported 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pros and 2010 / 2012 Mac Pros still have DVD drives. This might be the reason Apple decided to keep the app.
Click to expand...

I sure hope it was because I have a 2012 MacBook pro. I still use the DVD player on occasion and would prefer it built in, rather than external.
 
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crjackson2134 said:
Actually, some of us still use them. My car won't play BD so I do copy movies to be played in my car when out of town. Yes, my car has USB, etc... but the video player only works on DVD.

I have other uses for them as well...
Click to expand...


I'm not saying nobody use them. I watch DVDs myself on my Mac from time to time. What I'm saying is that the usage numbers likely aren't high enough that it makes a lot of sense to dedicate development resources to DVD player if they aren't going to also update it with newer disc standards. In that case just let a third party app handle it
 
casperes1996 said:
I don't think that's a perfect argument though. There are many other technologies that incur a licensing cost in macOS
Click to expand...

It’s not an argument, it’s a fact. This was a showstopper for every commercial OS back in the days when Blu-ray was releasing to the consumer market. The pass through cost per seat license was too high an add on to the cost of the OS. There was no point in driving up the price for everyone by the blu-ray licensing fee when it was understood not all OS users would need it. The OS makers left it to third party market to provide solutions to those that wished to add blu-ray playback to their computer.

Any other technologies that incur a licensing cost are no where near as expensive as blu-ray per seat, and many even have very limited actual costs based on how the developer rolls support back into the public development initiative. When Jobs said it was a bag of hurt, he wasn’t talking the technology but the licensing cost and complexities.
 
I'm reminded of back in the old days with iDVD, where the MPEG-2 encoding licence was attached to the SuperDrive hardware. This let Apple supply iDVD "for free", but it only worked with an Apple-supplied drive.
 
Nermal said:
I'm reminded of back in the old days with iDVD, where the MPEG-2 encoding licence was attached to the SuperDrive hardware. This let Apple supply iDVD "for free", but it only worked with an Apple-supplied drive.
Click to expand...
Are you saying only a SuperDrive will work with DVD Player in Mojave? I have a cheap DVD drive I bought from Amazon, which plays DVDs perfectly on High Sierra. Hoping this ability won't be lost in Mojave.
 
KoolAid-Drink said:
Are you saying only a SuperDrive will work with DVD Player in Mojave? I have a cheap DVD drive I bought from Amazon, which plays DVDs perfectly on High Sierra. Hoping this ability won't be lost in Mojave.
Click to expand...

I'm reminded of back in the old days with iDVD, where the MPEG-2 encoding licence was attached to the SuperDrive hardware. This let Apple supply iDVD "for free", but it only worked with an Apple-supplied drive.
Click to expand...

DVD Player.app =/= iDVD

Nothing has changed with DVD Player other than that it's been recompiled in 64bit and had some interface updates.
 
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