DVD movie playback on original iMac (tray-loading)

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DVD movie playback on original iMac (tray-loading)

Dear All,

I have a rev. B iMac (512MB RAM, Formac iProRAID TV SCSI/TV-tuner card, Sonnett Harmoni 500 MHz cpu card, FireWire). Has anybody achieved the feat of dvd movie playback on this machine? The dvd is being recognized and can be read while it is in the external dvd drive hooked up to the firewire port, but the apple dvd player tells that the configuration is not supported and quits (OS X 10.2.8). No better results under OS 9.2.2 or 8.6. I assume it might be related to the gestalt id of the iMac which is ruled out as incompatible within the player software (although the cpu should be powerful enough, not?).

Any help would be appreciated!

Many thanks and best regards,
TheG

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possible, but usable?

I too would like to know how well your config plays DVDs. Try VLC and let us know the results.

Also, see my recent thread on this very topic.

dan k

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Try this
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external dvd?

i would just like to comment that i have a 350mhz B&W that now has internal dvd drive and plays fine but wouldnt play with external firewire.. i think its gotta be internal for apple's dvd player to work the right way.

-justin

Jon
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Are the DVD drives you all ar

Are the FW DVD drives you all are using on the Apple-approved list? ie will they boot the machine from a CD?

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Dear All, Thank you for lead

Dear All,
Thank you for leading me into a potentially good direction. I will soon do the testing and keep you posted. To the config I should add that my iMac contains an IBM/Hitachi 120GB hd (IC35L120AVVA07-0, not quite slow).

The iMac rev. B can definitely not boot from an xternal DVD hooked up via FiWi since the firmware doesn´t permit that (couldn´t install 10.3 from dvd, bummer!).

Best regards,
TheG
QTH: Vienna, Austria

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Boots alright!

Are the FW DVD drives you all are using on the Apple-approved list? ie will they boot the machine from a CD?

Not sure but mine is a LaCie FireWire DVD+/-RW with dual layer 8.5 GB potential Wink Boots no problem on my G3DT with CDs and DVDs

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lets put it this way

the DVD drive i have is some no name thing that came from a pre fab PC it boots OSX, installs OSX, and plays DVD's OSX only, os9 DVD player doesnt like it.... but like i said internal only, half the time external stuff just isnt supported..... you should have good luck with internal Biggrin

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The result!

DVD Playback on an iMac Rev. B in the config mentioned in the thread IS POSSIBLE with VLC! The external DVD drive (actually writer) was a LaCie containing a NEC ND-2500A drive. Navigation was possible as intended, the video was at some point "staggering" (Harmoni 500 MHz working hard), but viewable. The sound was fine all the time.

I was using the US DVD (NTSC) of "The Graduate" for testing though being in Europe.

Nice to for a five year old machine, not?

Thanks for all your input!
Best regards,
TheG

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Did you try?

Did you try the DVDPlayer.app hack? With the replacement of the DVDPlaybck.framework? That will be much better for you machines... I posted a link to another thread with the way to do it further up in this post...

You will need Pacifist
And try Patchburn for to allow the drive to have boot and recording support...

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