Month: October 2004

More DVD Fun with OS X

Marina had the idea of sending my father a copy of UNCONSTITUTIONAL. My father returned the favor by sending us CELSIUS 41.11. Ironically enough while both UNCONSTITUTIONAL and OUTFOXED ran fine on VLC but caused my machine to crash on Apple's DVD player pretty much the opposite happened with CELSIUS 41.11. It ran on Apple's DVD player without problem but if I tried it on VLC then VLC got an error that screwed up the sound. In fact, if I ran VLC and then ran Apple's DVD player the sound stayed broken. The only way to get the DVD to play right was to kill VLC and run Apple's DVD player which for the first time didn't crash my machine! I guess Apple must be right wing.

OS X + G5 != DVD Player, but there is hope!

I just got a new DVD, UNCONSTITUTIONAL. I intentionally didn't run it full screen because I didn't want my machine to crash again. Unfortunately that didn't work. After running for twenty seven minutes and fifty seconds my machine died hard. Keyboard, mouse, DVD player, everything dead. The only sound a stuttering from the speakers. The only difference from my previous experience is that a friend told me to hold down the power button for five seconds or more instead of just pressing it the way I did last time. That did work so I didn't have to pull the plug. Of course the point of buying a Mac was to not have to know things like that.

It appears that I'm not alone in having this problem. The previously mentioned thread suggested two possible solutions. One was to turn off one of my dual processors but a number of people said this still caused problems for them. The other was to use a different video player than Apple's DVD player. VLC was suggested. As an experiment I played OUTFOXED full screen in VLC, turned off the sound and went to bed. I came back to my computer the next morning to find it running just fine. So for the moment I have a workaround. But I can't say it's a great work around because the VLC player is no where near as easy to use as the Apple player. Also note that at least on my LCD screen I found switching to video-deinterlace-blend made a big difference when blowing the picture up beyond normal size.

Come on Apple, this is pathetic! The previously referenced thread lists numerous people having this problem and you can safely assume for every person who posts there are many, many people like me who have the problem but didn't post. Just admit the problem exists and fix it already!