Certainly aligns with my conclusions and with Apple’s history! I’m glad none of my important data uses Apple software. I wish the DVD player still existed. It is causing me to invest a lot of time slowly moving recordings to MP4 files to use with VLC. Oh well.
It does. On my Sequoia (15.4.1) system, I just inserted a video DVD and it played. The app launched is /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/DVD Player. Here’s its about box:
Perhaps you meant to say the QuickTime 7 Player? That one fell by the wayside a long time ago, eliminating the ability to play files encoded with many old CODECs when its replacement app didn’t include support for them.
No. There was an actual DVD Player app in the Applications folder. It could play pretty much any disk in my collection. There were no special features but they played error free. I’m not talking about using Quicktime directly either.
I have a Mac Studio now, running Sonoma (I have no intention of upgrading and letting them break something else). I found the Core services app you mentioned but it did not work. I inserted a disk, it did not auto start, so I manually started the app and it would NOT play the disk even though it loaded it.
I doubt I will live long enough to ever need a new computer (good hardware). But if I do, I’ll be surprised if DVDs are supported at all by Apple, Hardware or Software. (BTW I started with a Mac Plus.)
That should be /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/DVD Player …
Edit: the path has been corrected in the original post.
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It’s the same app. Apple just moved it into CoreServices, because it typically auto-launches on disc insertion. But you can manually run it. Drag a copy to the Dock or create an alias somewhere for easy access.
I wonder what the deal is with that disc. I tried it with two of my discs - one commercial movie and one home movie I made years ago with iMovie/iDVD. It played both just fine.
It will not play a data disc that contains video files. For that, you would need something else (like VLC). It also won’t (as far as I know) play video-CDs.
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I’m running Ventura on an Intel iMac. My copy of DVD Player.app is in Macintosh HD/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications. I’ve kept an alias to it in a Finder sidebar (Favorites) ever since Apple moved it out of the Applications folder.
It continues to work without any problems for me. However, my iMac stopped playing CDs and DVDs that were inserted into a very, very old (I first used it with an igloo iMac) LaCie disc burner sometime in the past few years. Optical discs inserted into a USB Apple SuperDrive and an ultra-cheap Verbatim drive mount and play as expected. So it’s possible the OP’s issue to due to an outdated optical drive.
Not necessarily outdated - the protocols used by the drive haven’t changed that much over the years.
But old drives do go bad. Those solid state laser elements do get dim over time (much like LEDs do) and eventually, they will degrade to the point where they can’t reliably read a disc.
And since CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs use different wavelengths of laser light, drives that support multiple formats will have two or three laser elements which will not all wear out at the same time.
But the OP says that the problem discs will play with VLC, which tells me that it’s not the drive hardware causing the problem. Although it may be that VLC performs more/better error correction than Apple’s app. (Unless I misunderstood something - maybe the mention of VLC is for playing ripped media files, not from discs.)
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