[kahlan]

I'm hoping someone can help me with this issue. I'm running a clamshell with just a regular cd player and wanted to hook up my external cd/dvd burner. It's a Mad Dog for Windows only. However after messing around with it I found that the install disk had a mac folder hidden on it and managed to get it working. I'm now able to burn off it, which is nice, but I am having a hard time getting it to play dvd's.

I tried Pacifist, but wasn't able to find the dvd player on my system software cd ( I'm
a total newbie to Mac). I also tried a program called VLC. I did get some dvd's to start up,
but had major problems getting past the movie menu. I tried different settings, but no
luck.

So... does anybody out there know of any decent dvd players. I'm running Panther
10.3.9

Thanks for any help you can give me!

[SSharon]

This is a long shot, but when did DVD players no longer require the assistance of dedicated processor cards like the pismo had? The clamshells had 266mhz I think and that might not be enough.
Your best bet it to wait for a better answer than mine.

[megasad]

Originally Posted by kahlan

...I tried Pacifist, but wasn't able to find the dvd player on my system software cd ( I'm
a total newbie to Mac)...

Download Pacifist, put the Panther CD/DVD in your computer, open Pacifist and click the Open Mac OS X Install Packages button. Go to Contents of OSInstall.mpkg -> Contents of EssentialSystemSoftware.mpkg -> Contents of Essentials.pkg -> Applications. Select the DVD Player.app and Extract it to your Applications folder and now maybe DVDs play in it.

However, if Apple's own DVD player won't work for you, give InterActual Player a try.

[tooki]

The Pismo did not have a hardware DVD decoder. The Lombard and Wallstreet models did. But under Mac OS X, all DVD playback is done in software, even if the hardware decoder is present.

VLC is too CPU-intensive for that age machine.

Anyhow, what model iBook is it? If it doesn't have FireWire, you can't reliably use an external drive, because USB 1.1 is simply not fast enough for reliable DVD playback. Yes, the raw bitrate is sufficient, but when you count in overhead and other delays, it may result in glitches.

As for the DVD Player application — it was never installed because that model has no DVD drive. The instructions above will work to install it.

tooki