Comments on: Playing anamorphic DVDs under OS X

By: Bruce

Bruce — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 23:58:49 +0000

Michael, there shouldn't be any problem caused by the MPEG-2 encoding of the .vob files you recorded off TV. I've been able to playback these on my (Intel) Mac mini when recorded to both DVD-R and DVD R; your friends mini should thus have no problem with the media or the video. My experience is, however, that Apple's DVD Player is a bit fussy about menu structures. For example, one of my DVDs plays fine on the PC, but DVD Player doesn't recognize it at all until I click "Play" (no menu appears). I suspect DVD Player is the problem, and suggest you ask your friend to download VLC as this app seems more tolerant of disks produced on a variety of devices.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 10:52:04 +0000

Slightly off-topic I'm afraid, but you seem to know what you're talking about... I recorded TV using our Panasonic DVD recorder in LP mode (don't know the compression) onto a DVD-R. I tried playing it back on a friend's new Intel Mac using DVD Player - it showed the menu screen the first time only to fail playback, and now it won't even show the menu screen, saying the disk cannot be read. The disk is not damaged, in Finder the VOBs are clearly on the disk, and plays back fine on PCs and our DVD player. Any idea's what's going on? Are these recordings blocked out for some reason?

Thanks,

Michael.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for this. I thought it must be really simple but have been struggling for ages to find a way to play widescreen DVD+R disks in the proper aspect ratio on Macs. Trouble is VLC seems rather unstable - if only Apple would add the ability to play movies in 16:9 or 4:3 to DVD Player...