HD DVD

DVD's are standard resolution (not HD) and Apple includes a DVD Player app with each machine.

HD DVD's are "Blu Ray" and will not play on a Mac without the appropriate hardware.

QuickTime Player isn't involved.

Will Quicktime or Quicktime Pro play HD DVDs? If not, what application do I need in order to play them?

What QTKirk is saying is that QT, whether X, 7, or 7 Pro, does not play "authored" video discs of any kind—VCD, SVCD, DVD, HD DVD, or BD. It can, however, play optical "data" discs on your computer directly from a CD, DVD, or BD player/burner attached to your system if encoded specifically for this type of playback. For the average user, this normally means home encoded H.264/AAC video content specifically "optimized for CD/DVD" playback and not content authored for playback on a commercial player.

I have an HD DVD drive connected to my Mac, so I get the CD icon on my desktop. Is there an application that will alow playback of HD DVD for the Mac?

Unfortunately, none of the 5 drives currently built-in/attached to my main system can mount any of the HD DVD content (Star Trek Season One HD DVD bonus content) I have available. (I.e., since HD DVD lost the HD format race, it has become harder and harder to find HD DVD content and/or compatible players.) In addition, none of my relatively new 3D BD commercial players will read the HD DVD content. As such, it would seem to be irresponsible to recommend a Mac media player which cannot be tested on my system. My only recommendation would be to do as we are doing—search the Internet for an answer to your problem.

For instance, since you indicate you can mount the discs on your system, the next logical question would be whether or not you can copy the video file(s) from your HD DVD discs to your hard drive. (I.e., are the files protected or not?) If the files are not protected and in a normal MPEG-4/AVC format, then the content can suposedly be played once the file data is extracted from the HD DVD disc and stored on your local hard drive. (Not sure if Microsoft VC-1 is/was ever used to encoded commercial HD DVD content but if so, the 1080i version probably won't play in QT or VLC players as is—i.e., would require conversion and usually ends up with WMV logo burned into the video during conversions—or at least that is the result when used for BD content.) Once again, this is something I can't test because these discs will not mount because my players only check for MPEG-2 content once they determine the optical media to be DVD.

I know that DVD's are standard definaition (SD) and just so you know that HD DVD is a different format to Blu Ray.

I assume we are all aware of these differences but since your original post did not indicate whether the content was commercial HD DVD, home grown Toast HD DVD content burned to DVD media, or HD content burned as H.264/AAC "data" files to DVD, it seemed reasonable to bring up this possibility in the event that you were a novice QT user having QT playback problems due to excessive data rates and excursions beyond the normal capabilities of a standard DVD burner/player.

AsgardFleet82 wrote:

I know that DVD's are standard definaition (SD) and just so you know that HD DVD is a different format to Blu Ray.

I have an HD DVD drive connected to my Mac, so I get the CD icon on my desktop. Is there an application that will alow playback of HD DVD for the Mac?

Sorry, but there is not and never has been software for Mac OS X that could play an HD DVD. I'm not even aware of any Windows software that could play HD DVD movies, but that would be your only hope.

Regards.

For Windows, there are old versions of Cyberlink's PowerDVD or ArcSoft's Total Medie Theatre around the net, which could play HD DVD a few years back, but ceased to in newer versions since HD DVD died long ago.

Still works like a charm: XBox360 with original MS HD DVD drive, which you can get for peanutsthese days.

I am not aware of any programs that fully support HD DVD disks even though DVD Studio Pro burns them.

Using VLC (and probably other file-playing programs like mplayer) you can open the individual movies files (typically ending in EVO) and watch them in their full splendor.