[GreenHat09]

Just about to make the switch, but just saw a thread in the G5 Powermac forum. It said that the Superdrive wouldn't play backups of DVD's from an actual DVD-R/+R (not on hard drive.) The next post said that happened to him to, and all of hist backups were on the PC. I have loads of backups and need them to work on this, cuz I will be watchin alot of them on the Powerbook. Well, what is your experience with them? Just some feedback. I use Ritek discs if that helps. Thanks

[dantley]

You'll have touse a third party DVD player such as VLC. It works great on my Dual CPU G5 with backups I've made of my movies.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[rjenkinson]

apple's DVD player has always played movies on DVD�R/W discs for me. just point the application to the video TS folder and press the play button.

-r.

[GreenHat09]

Rjenkinson- Thank you very much for your reply. I realize that it will work if you have the Video TS saved on your HD, but my concern is if it will play my PC backups on DVD-R. Any1 with this experience? Thanks

[bamchum]

We could use a bit more information.

What kind of DVD-R backups are you talking about?

Are you talking about a DVD-R of a ripped and compressed commercial DVD? A mac has no problem playing those, but you have to copy and decrypt the DVD beforehand and for that you'll need tools like DVDBackup. A word about the legality of this: if you live in the US, use of such decrypting tools is almost certainly a violation of the DMCA. However, that act is likely (though not certain) to be overturned by the Supreme Court. Regardless, you do this at your own risk (of course).

If the DVD you've copied to DVD-R is not commercial, you'll have no need to decrypt and no problems playing it.

If, on the other hand, you're talking about somehow just copying using the Finder the parts of a DVD to a DVD-R and playing the DVD-R, it won't work for any number of reasons.

[stevesnj]

I used DVDBackup but want to put my backup on a 4.7gb DVD-R. How do i do this. DVDBackup only decrypts the DVD not compress it for use on a standard 4.7gb DVD-R. There are programs for the PC that do this but none for the Mac (that I can find).

[shrink]

Originally posted by stevesnj:
I used DVDBackup but want to put my backup on a 4.7gb DVD-R. How do i do this. DVDBackup only decrypts the DVD not compress it for use on a standard 4.7gb DVD-R. There are programs for the PC that do this but none for the Mac (that I can find).

http://www.dvd2one.com

[bamchum]

Also:

http://www.metakine.com/products/dvdremaster/

[EdipisReks]

you need dvd2onex.

[Eug]

Apple's DVD Player is fairly strict and will not automatically play certain DVD-Rs that don't adhere to the DVD standard. Programs like Nero used to have a nasty habit of burning discs with improper permissions or something. The discs wouldn't work on Apple machines and some DVD players. (To get around it one can just navigate to the VIDEO_TS folder directly and play it that way.) However, this is not really a problem with the DVD Player, but is a problem with the way the disc was burned.

Also, the Panasonic SuperDrive in the Mac laptops can be picky with media. OTOH, it always works with good quality media. It's the noname cheap stuff that causes problems, but it also causes problems on PCs and set top DVD players. Although Ritek makes some good quality discs, they also have a lot of stuff that is utter garbage. YMMV. I use exclusively name brand DVD-R now. Mostly Apple media, simply it's the best bang for the buck (that includes jewel cases). Mitsui and Pioneer media etc. also works great, but it's usually much more expensive than Apple media. I don't touch that low end stuff - too many problems on all my machines (including my PCs and a couple of my DVD players).

BTW, the SuperDrive in the Power Mac is usually a Sony or a Pioneer, but it could be others too. The SuperDrives in the PowerBooks are all made by Panasonic/Matsushita.

[bamchum]

Eug,

Do you know anything about whether xvi and cynikal are going to be coming out with region-free firmware for the UJ-816?