[Cosmo]

A friend of mine has an iMac DV (tangerine) and the Scary Movie DVD. It won't play.

On the DVD box it says: "contains standard dvd materiel. You must have a dvd rom drive on your pc with windows 95 or higher to operate the enhanced pc features of the disc. This discs rom features will not work on macintosh ".

To me all that means is that the built in softare will not run, but shouldn't the movie still play?

She is the type of user the iMac is aimed at and knows very little about computers. All she has told me is that when she inserts the DVD "the warnings will come on and then it will freeze my [her] computer ".

I believe she is running OS 9.
I haven't had a chance to look at her computer for myself, but I will as soon as I can, what info should I pay special attention to (other than obvious things like system, ram, etc) as I have no experience with DVDs.

Also she has successfully played A Bugs Life and X-Men on her iMac.

Is there any way to make this DVD play on her iMac. I don't want this experience sour her on Macs in general, any help would be greatly appreciated, I will post more info about her computer when I get a chance to look at it.

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Cosmo has left the building...

ICQ me: 24184791

[Chuck_star]

Did the DVD have any transparent areas where the label isn't full?
I once had the same problem with these conditions.

[QuatermassX]

Most all modern DVD's will play in MacOS computers. My Blue and White G3/350 plays all the DVD's in my 110-disc collection.

The warning labels on DVD's regarding Mac's most often refer to "PC-Friendly" features: an .exe screensaver, desktop pics, simple games. The ONLY reason that those features are Windows-specific is that they are .exe/executable files rather than Mac applications. When you "install" a DVD on a Windows box, it places a program in the "Start" menu that serves as a file browser/DVD player, installs a screensaver, and generally puts a "web link" to the site for the film.

All in all it's garbage and a bloody pain in the neck.

HOWEVER. Remember that there are MANY MANY MANY ways to author DVD menus. Sometimes your mouse might not work -- use the keyboard to tab around the on-screen menus.

ALSO. Make sure you have the very latest version of Apple's DVD player (run the Software Update Control Panel and wait ... and wait ...).

Good luck!

I was just browsing when I saw across this post.

Scary Movie IS a problematic DVD - even on some Home/domestic players it will sometimes freeze at the FBI screen. I found that simply holding down the play button or repeatedly tapping it pushed it through this 'sticky' screen.

I have not had any problem with playback on my Mac, but perhaps doing the same with the onscreen control widget will do the same?

Good Luck.

[bleen]

This ticks me off that DVD producers do that with the software. It's a subtle way of trying to get more people to buy Windows. I hope OS X will change many things in the OS market and finally bring Windows down from it's reign of popularity.