Why won't the dvd player recognize a disc?

I wish I had an answer. I've been a mac user since 1984 (yes, the original 128 mac). I have converted many friends to the wonders of the Mac. However, this will probably be my last mac. I travel a lot, attend grad school and use my old laptops (current one is the Macbook Pro retina, 13in, running OS 10.11.6) for a variety of uses including watching DVD's. I purchased an external DVD in order to play DVD's. It has never worked. I have followed the wonderful community suggestions and none have worked. I have reset what I could reset. I have tried to clean the optics but even the cleaner disk is spit out. I don't understand why Apple cannot fix this. Media was always their speciality. I am going to upgrade my laptop when I finish grad school and will purchase an HP....sigh.

I have the same problem. None of the suggestions worked for me.

Also I wanted to point out that, in my case, it can't be the drive because there is no problem playing music CDs. It only ejects DVDs even though I have the Preference (mentioned above) checked.

How can I get it to play DVDs?

Open System Preferences > CDs & DVDs

Make a select from the pop up menu(s).

And open Finder > Preferences > General

Make sure: CDs, DVDs, and iPods is selected.

This is usually a sign that the media is not recognised or the drive has an issue - if it happens with other discs it's more likely to be something wrong with the drive - if it's just the one disc - use different discs.

Check System Preferences -> CD's & DVD's to check what the system is set to do when media is put into the drive.

Try cleaning the lens of the optical drive.

Use a DVD lens cleaning disk.

If you have a can of compressed air, shoot some in to the slot.

Us a fine microfiber cloth (eyeglasses cleaning cloth) wrapped around a business card and gently insert it into the slot.

Ciao.

Hi ogelthorpe!

I tried your suggestion which is using a cleaning cloth and a card. It works!

Thanks so much.

Worked for me too ... many thanks ;-)

The microfiber cloth + paper card tip worked wonders ! Thanks !!

But the disc works in my home DVD player... just not in my Mac...

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