My 'superdrive' doesn't read or recognise film dvds

Not knowing where you bought the iMac and what region it is set for, is it possible this is a regional problem?

To follow up on what RRFS said, here is more information on what he meant by DVD regions in case you are not familiar with them.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2397

It sounds like LoveFilm is the equivalent of a service we call Netflix in the US that rents DVD's by mail. Your iMac should be fairly tolerant of gently abused media. I know that my kids have damaged a lot of my discs with scratches and most are still readable.

Can you provide more information about the model of iMac that you are using and the OS version too?

What happens if you insert the disc then manually launch the DVD Player application that is located in your Applications folder?

Did you set the Finder preferences to show mouted dvd's on the desktop (Finder preferences-->General)?

See if a video player like vlc can "see" it.

I don't know what operating system I have, except that it's MAC OS X. I only just got it new two days ago. I'd be grateful for any advice anyone can give me.

In the Apple menu, click About This Mac. It will tell you what you are running. Then click More Info in that same window to bring up the System Profiler (or launch it yourself from Utilities). Click Hardware in the System Profiler and it will show you your model name and id.

Hi CeeSkay,

I have about the same problem as you.

iMac 24" (early 2009), 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB Memory 1067 MHz DDR3

OSX Lion 10.7.3 - SuperDrive NVidia MCP79 AHCI HL-DT-ST DVDRW GA11N

Normally, all goes well when I put a video-DVD in the SuperDrive slot.

But sometimes, apparently with slightly damaged DVDs, it goes haywire:

Sequence of events:

1. put a video-DVD in the SuperDrive. System Prefs is set to start DVD player when a video-DVD is placed in the drive
2. the DVD turns around a bit, but is not recognised. The DVD icon does not appear on the desktop (Finder is set to show icon of CD/VD in SuperDrive). The DVD can't be thrown out since it doesn't appear
3. Programs like Disk Tools, System Prefs and the like will not start, or have to be force quit because they don't react. If they work at all, they don't see the SuperDrive or the DVD in it.
4. 'About this Mac' pretends there is no SuperDrive installed on the computer!!
5. The only way to try and throw out the DVD is by restarting the computer (with mouse button pressed). The DVD will either be thrown out somewhere during the start-up, or the DVD icon will appear on the desktop once start-up is completed.

Sometimes, it seems to help when I have the Disk Tools open before putting in the DVD, apparently this helps the DVD Player to see the DVD.

Often, once the problem starts, it's hard for the iMac to return back to the normal behaviour, even with DVDs that have finctioned normally before.

What is rather frightening, is that all tools are suddenly blind for the existence if the SuperDrive! It's also annoying because it takes quite some time to shut and restart in the hope of solving the problem (often I need to stop and go several times - the expectation and pleasure of seeing a good film then go down the drain...)

Anything that can be done to avoid this behaviour?

I bought a DVD Cleaner/Polisher (MadCatz) to address this problem. Saved dozens of DVDs.

keeping it clean is of course OK, but that's not the problem in this case.

The SuperDrive never fails to read (and write) CDs

Guy

toucheguy- RRFS's suggestion may be the solution for your issue even though you indicate that your drive can read and write CD's without any issues. The multi format optical pickup mechanism uses a different wavelength laser for CD's versus DVD's. DVD's use a 650 nm wavelength laser diode, while CD's use a 780 nm wavelength laser diode. Since your DVD issue is somewhat intermittent it could be a dust issue causing the problem.

Maxell and others, I'm sure, make a DVD with tiny bristles on it for cleaning the actual R/W head. The device I recommended earlier is for getting scratches out of DVDs and CDs. I have removed several previously fatal scratches from some irreplacable DVDs.

I Had same problem. When Inserted blank DVD ,CD shows : "there is error and superdrive can not perform ...bleble " i tried 10 diferent dvd-s cd-s (working ok with dvd ,cd with date on it , just problem with blank )

What i did:

Unmount dvd

unplug it and plug it into diferent USB port.

Working perfectly now.

Not sure what it was but helps. Hate fixing it this way but have no choice.