Superdrive ""too sensitive" ?

[brammargry]

Hi Guys,

I hope somebody can help me out with this. I'm been trying to watch some DVDs I rented with my Macbook (the white one with the dvd-burner aka superdrive). I currently do not live were I bought the macbook, so I'm using VLC-player not to get any trouble with the DVD-regions. I guess that doesn't really influence my problem, but Im kinda of a dvd-newbie so I just mention.

The problem is that my drive seem to have trouble reading SOME dvds:

-VLC-player: doens't play the disc.

-Finder: (when trying to copy contents to HD): The finder cannot complete the operation because some date in "VIDEO_TS.VOB" could not be read or written. (error code -36)

-MacRipper: Bad Sectors! The disc has bad sectors. All though the rip is complete, the rip may not playback. Pleas check prior to Burning. (and nope: it doesn't play )

The last THREE dvds we rented didn't play in my macbook, we had to use my girlfriends windows-laptop (and I'm the one trying to tell her that mac is better ).

A DVD from the same region country that I just BOUGHT works perfectly!

It seems to me, that my macbook stops reading disks that have even the slightest scratch on them.. It is like... "too sensitive" or reads the disks "too perfect"...

Any ideas? Is this a defect? Something I need to live with? Something that can be fixed by myself? Any suggestions?

thanks in advance,

bram

 

[LedCop]

Don't blame the drive completely just yet because:

VLC: I don't think VLC defeats region restrictions.

Finder: Virtually all commercial DVDs have copy protection so a simple copy-paste/drag-and-drop of the DVDs' contents isn't gonna work.

MacRipper: Well, I haven't really used MacRipper but my experiences with a DVD-ripping program on windows gives me 'bad sector' errors as well when the DVD has copy-protection that is newer/more advanced than the program was capable of cracking.

Is your gf's Windows laptop's DVD-drive set to the region code of the DVDs you're trying to play? If so, there's your answer.
And I bet copying the contents using Windows explorer isn't gonna work like with the Mac's Finder.

My suggestion - change your Mac's DVD drive's region to the region of the DVDs you're trying to play and rip and see if they work then.

 

[tongteh]

i would love to know the answer to this as well.. i put in a dvd and it just doesn't play.. didn't even mount the disc...

note: there are scratches on the dvd..

 

[brammargry]

It's not VLC

Don't blame the drive completely just yet because:

VLC: I don't think VLC defeats region restrictions.

Thanks for the reply!

Just I can tell you that VLC _does_ defeat the region restrictions. The one DVD that I bought is the same region that I'm hiring and it works perfectly. Also, on my gf's windows laptop we use the VLC player to work around her computer's region setting. I've been using VLC for quite some time, and it seemed the best program I could get. Anyway, of course I'd like try others if somebody has a suggestion!

Thanks for all the info about finder and the ripper. I just tried some basic stuff, but I don't know anything about dvds or their copyright protection.

Ow, and btw: all my disks got mounted correctly. I can see the title of the disk and the contents. Just full reading of the files is a problem.

 

[dubhe]

I have used Mac the Ripper many times with no problems, I use both Region 1 and 2 discs due to my wife being from across the pond

 

[ogdenous]

My suggestion would be check another mac or PC and see if it will play there. I bought the new macbook and the 1st one had a bummed DVD drive. It would not mount or read my Windows Ultimate disk I was using for bootcamp. thought it was some Mac thing against windows but tried on another macbook and it mounted and read properly. Returned it for another macbook and it read without issue. Only one problem now, the new one I got back from them has lit pixels. Here we go again.

 

[brammargry]

"solution"

OK, this was/is the problem: My drive was not set to the correct region...

VLC player can work around the region problem, however only when it is used on Windows computer and some older macs (or something like this, not very sure if I'm saying the perfectly correct thing).
New Macbooks apparently have some sort of a dvd-drive called "MATSHITA" that is harder to trick.

The disk I bought said on the box it was region 3 also, however it did not mention is was basically region free as it had all the other regions are well.

All the dvds I rented were "pure region 3".

Sorry, no "real solution".. however good to know that setting your drive to the wrong region gives a bunch of weird I/O -36 errors that don't make sense..