Gripe Post #2: Apple SuperDrive Stopped Reading DVD Video

Weird.  It’s as if my PowerMac G5 knows that I want to replace it, and it’s starting to rebel.

Last night, it just stopped reading DVD Video discs.  Still reads data DVDs just fine, as well as CDs.  But DVD Video spins a few times, fails to mount, and self-ejects.

I thought it was some special disc-protection dreamt up by the MPAA, but nope.  It’s every DVD movie disc.

I found about 100 threads on the topic from the last month on the Apple discussion boards, which are great, BTW.  Unfortunately, many of them date back to late March.  All of them claim the 10.5.2 release broke the drive for certain types of disc with a firmware update.  Strangely, instead of fixing the software, it seems that Apple is going with a hardware-based solution.  This is the best thread so far, which also has pointers to a manual hack to restore firmware for Matsushita drives.  (mine, unfortunately, is a different brand)

I guess I’m making a trip to the Apple Store this weekend.  Until then, no DVD movie discs for this G5.  Thank goodness for AppleCare.