iMac G5 DVD Drive

It can be hit and miss. There's really not a lot you can do. It may have even been reversed. Where the iMac could read it and the DVD stand alone couldn't.

DVD- RW's make it even worse. They pretty much only play on what made them. That's not always the case but it's pretty common.

It's always a good idea to use brand name media (but then again it isn't always necessary). Kind of see what I'm getting at? It's just not an exact science when it comes to playing DVD media.

But yes the iMac should be able to play DVD+RW's.

So far, I'm not impressed with DVD drive in my iMac...

I've had 2 occasions where a data copy from dvd-r disc to desktop resulted in incomplete data (where the exact same routine worked flawlessly on my G4 Cube)... 3 instances where Commercial DVD's would not mount or play (listed as unsupported when checked in Disk Utility... and yes they were region 1)... and overall it's extremely noisy.

I've heard people complain about fan noise and such from their iMac... I've experience none of these.. in fact I'd say it's a very quiet machine... but pop in a disc, and WOW it's loud to the point where it seems broken.

I'm going to give it a little leeway at least until another OS (10.4.3) update comes out... but if I continue to experience these problems afterwards, I'm going to expect a replacement drive from Apple.

the drive in the old G4 imacs were screamers. the new one hasn't been to overwhleming. I got a falied verification saturday after burning a movie, but I turned around and watched it, with no problems what so ever. (DVD-R) I was also using an external drive, but that one was even louder. I would probably steer clear of -RW media, unless you were backing up documents and other simple files. like it was mentioned, they are finicky about which drive they can be read in. plus on average the write speed is much slower than -/+R media

the most slot-in drives in theh imacG5 only support dvd-RW media.

According to the tech specs page on Apples Imac G5 page:

Optical drive Slot-loading Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/ DVD±RW/CD-RW)

thats true. but my imac g5 can only read dvd+rw dvds that were burned with a mac. all dvd-rws that were burned with nero on a pc don´t work...

Yeah Nicolas that's kind of what I was getting at with my first post in the thread. There's just no telling what works and where. Very frustrating. Not sure if there's ever going to be a complete solution.

You're talking about aiming a laser to a very small area and each manufacturer probably aims it slightly different than the next.

I'm in a quandary now. I need to get a DVD out to someone which I've never dealt with and the turn around is very close. I'm hoping he'll be able to play it somewhere. I can use the ones I've burned on my iMac on both my home stand alone DVD players but one of two at work it won't play on. As I say..... very frustrating.