I cannot get DVDs to play on my computer and my machine is supposed to
play them. Can you help?

Here are my specs:


G3 PowerBook
Running Mac OS 9.2
384 MB RAM
DVD ROM Drive (I verified this in system profiler)
DVD Decoder present (also in profiler)

When I try to play a commercial DVD the player appears on my desktop.
On one or two occasions it played the DVD briefly--then quit. But
mostly I get a dialogue box message that says it cannot recognize the
disk and do I want to re-initialize the disk?

Will provide more info if you have specific questions. I'm thinking
maybe there is a patch or something to fix this.

If this question becomes more complex than the simple question it
appears to me, please let me know and I will tip accordingly.

Thanks in advance for your help.

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 18 Feb 2004 07:08 PST

Have you installed the DVD player program for your system? See if
using another DVD player program will help. Aside from that, please
see if your DVD player is region-locked for a certain region, and what
region coding your DVDs have.

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Clarification of Question by sermonauthor-ga on 18 Feb 2004 13:35 PST

Thanks for your comments and clarifications. I have Apple DVD Player,
which comes with OS 9.2, installed. I don't use bootlegged disks. Only
commercially produced, either rented or purchased.

I'm aware that disks produced in another region--say Europe--may not
play on our DVD systems. But all disks I've tried are those produced
commercially right here in the ol' US of A, so I assume they meet the
requirements. If it were only one or two disks not playing, I would
consider I might have gottten hold of a disk from another region.
However, having tried to play with at least 10 different disks, this
does not appear to be the issue.

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Clarification of Question by sermonauthor-ga on 18 Feb 2004 13:44 PST

For Nandita--I checked out the software you suggested. Unfortunately
it requires OS 10.2 or higher and I'm running 9.2 and won't be
switching while I own this particular machine. This is, however, in
the spirit of my question--to find a software solution to my problem.
Thanks for the suggestion. It was an interesting site I've not
visited.

which player have you tried? i have downloaded and used ffmpegX
http://homepage.mac.com/major4/
it works fine, you might want to try it
hth

Are your DVDs bootleg DVDs? If so, they might not play. I would
suggest trying other discs, regardless of whether the disks you tried
were bootleg or not. (Perhaps you can rent one from your local video
store, or borrow one from a friend.)