DVD Player opens to gray screen -- audio is OK

Question

Level 1

102 points

DVD Player opens to gray screen -- audio is OK

iMac 7,1 - 480GB SSD, 6GB RAM, 27" screen. Trying to view DVDs from DVD Player. Program starts normally, but when we play DVD we get gray screen, no video image at all. However audio is playing normally. Have tried this with multiple DVDs, all have same response. See screenshot, below.

This Mac has run DVD player fine in the past, no problems.

Computer runs fine in all other respects. Any help/recommendations would be appreciated.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 480GB SSD, 6GB RAM

Posted on Jun 5, 2016 2:40 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 6, 2016 6:13 AM in response to Peter Jones4

A screen capture of DVD Player would be grey like that but obviously it should normally play ok on screen.

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

684,015 points

Jun 10, 2016 12:20 PM in response to Peter Jones4

Long shot.

Might be a corrupt .plist.

Do a backup, preferably 2 backups on 2 separate drives.

Quit the application.

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Then go to Preferences/com.apple.DVDPlayer.plist. Move the .plist to your desktop.

Restart the computer, open the application, and test. If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop.

If the application is the same, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer one.

Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.

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Answer 3

Peter Jones4 Author

Level 1

102 points

Jun 10, 2016 12:00 PM in response to John Lockwood

Maybe so, but it's gray on the live screen as well. The cursor on the bottom moves across as the movie plays, but I can only hear sound; no images appear and the window is full-time gray.

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Answer 4

Peter Jones4 Author

Level 1

102 points

Jun 10, 2016 12:19 PM in response to Eric Root

Eric thank you. Removing the com.apple.dvdplayer.plist files from ~/Library/Preferences did the job. Note I said "files." There were actually two relevant files in the folder -- com.apple.dvdplayer.plist and com.apple.dvdplayer.plist.lockfile.

Not sure what the .lockfile is for, but I dragged both of these out, restarted, and everything was fine. Ran two different DVDs with no challenges.

Thanks again! // Peter

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Answer 5

Eric Root

Level 10

684,015 points

Jun 10, 2016 12:48 PM in response to Peter Jones4

You are welcome.

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