MBP reads burnt DVD as blank

[oinky]

"You have inserted a blank DVD..."

So I burnt my video project to DVD using DVD Studio Pro on an iMac at Uni, but when I insert the disk on my MBP at home, it reads it as a blank DVD with nothing on it.

I have tested the disc(s) on other laptops (PC and Mac) and my DVD player, and all play the video fine. I use my laptop for everything so this is very annoying for me. Do you guys know how to fix this problem?
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edit My MBP reads other discs fine.

 

[Makosuke]

Have you tried other DVDs or DVD-Rs in your MBP? It's not at all uncommon for some drives to succeed at reading borderline media where others fail. The media department at the university where I work, for example, has frequently given us DVD-Rs that throw up large numbers of read errors on an iMac internal slot-loading drive, while my blu-ray drive at home is somewhat more tolerant and will read them without issue.

Most likely situation is that the disc didn't burn properly, but it's close enough to readable that most drives can error-correct around it, while your MBP fails to find anything usable on the disc.

An alternate possibility, which I've also had happen to my own MBP, is that the drive has dirt/dust on the lens, which can cause complete failure in reading DVDs and/or CDs (and/or just DVD-Rs, or CD-Rs). Mine did exactly that, until I ran one of those CD lens cleaners through it. They're not recommended for slot-load drives, and it sounded terrible, but since it was dead anyway I figured it was worth a shot, and indeed it did return it to working order.

I can't think of any software issue that would cause the behavior you're seeing, unless you've installed something that mucks with the optical drive on a low level. You could test, if you have a spare external around, by installing a fresh OS on it and seeing if it'll read when booted from that drive, but that's a lot of time for what is probably a hardware/firmware issue.