Humax DVR w/burner, will the DVD's play on a Mac?

[dapetrun]

To all those Mac enthusiasts out there, if I decide to purchase the Humax DVR with the DVD burner will those TV shows recorded by the DVR and later burned to a DVD be able to be viewed on a Mac (specifically a PowerBook)? Thanks for any opinions but I'm looking for proven facts here because of the significant $ it will cost me.

[gtrogue]

Yes.
I'm watching one right now on a Powerbook.

[petew]

The format of the data written to the disk will be 100% compatible with the power Mac, the only issue could be physical incompatibilities between the media you use and the DVD drive you're trying to play the disk on. DVD-R media is most likely to be compatible with other drives. If you have problems, try a different brand.

[rkester]

I have problems wiht mine playing discs sometimes where the DVD Player will crash but it depends on the brand of media and how the mac is feeling at the moment I think. Its moody.

[TiVoEvan74]

Hadn't thought about doing this, but I just took a DVD burned in our Humax and popped into our iBook.

The disc showed up in the finder... with a folder labeled Video_TS and a bunch of cryptically named docs inside. Double-clicking any of them results in an error message or rather a prompt indicating that it doesn't know which application to play the file!

So, it looks to be more complicated than expected. Then I read a previous post that mentioned DVD Player. I launched it. And got an oddball message about needing to set the Region! With a pull down menu of choices (Region 1, Region 2, etc.--realy helpful Apple!) and a comment, a warning, a threat actually that one can only do this 5 times! Bizarre!

Then I clicked the Select Region button figuring it would give me a world map or something... instead, it happily reported Region set (wait! I didn't choose one) and launched itself, with the TiVo DVD screen coming up full screen! Amazing!

And then I selected a movie to play and it did so! Alas, there was no easy way to returning to the dock (which had been made invisible). I tried the command key for hiding/showing dock, no go, tried escape, but that simply restarted the movie, tried space bar (in other words all the old Mac tricks). Finally had to quit the Player.

There must be a way of doing a background play or small window play, I'll have to check that out. (Ah, discovered that the menu bar becomes visible when one move the pointer--invisible-- to the top of the screen, an old trick I had forgotten about. And sure enough, one can exit full screen mode.)

Of course, ultimately this is not something I plan on doing much if at all. I'd rather watch the movie on a TV!

[TiVoEvan74]

OTOH, I just tried a DVD-RW disc and it wasn't recognized by the DVD Player even though it shows up fine in the finder!

Geesh! Just when I thought this would be easy... any work arounds on this problem?

Oh, and a P.S. on my previous post... the pointer is visible (at least for a while).

[Jerry®]

TDK-DVD-RW do not seem to be compatible with Macs. However, the disc and the TS_FOLDER show up on the desktop. I used Mplayer to open the TS_ folder and it played just fine. I've got an iMac G5 w/DL DVD-R/RW running 10.4.4.

Also - the TDK DVD-RW played fine in my standalone Magnavox DVD player.

[TiVoEvan74]

What is Mplayer? And do you think this is restricted to TDKs or is a general problem with DVD-RWs recorded on TiVos?

And if Mplayer can do it, why not Apple's own DVD player?

[Jerry®]

Not sure why the TDK DVD-RW didn't play in my superdrive. Mplayer is kinda like quicktime player except it supports a huge amount of formats. You can find it at macupdate or versiontracker for free.

[Jerry®]

One more message until I can post a URL

[Jerry®]

MplayerX
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18580

[TiVoEvan74]

Have you tried another brand DVD-RW?

Thanks for the link to Mplayer. I'll check it out.

[TydalForce]

I burned a DVD-R (Verbatim) on my Humax 80-hour and it played perfectly on my PowerBook. In general, there's no reason why it wouldn't/shouldn't, though an older DVD drive may have trouble with burned media (less likely on computers, but definitely true with DVD Players)

If Apple's DVD Player is not launching automatically when you insert a video DVD, take a look in System Preferences --> CDs & DVDs. There's an option "When you insert a Video DVD" that should be set to "Open DVD Player". You may have it set to "Ignore" or open another application (possibly one that no longer exists).

You can also have DVD Player open a disc manually. I've seen this necessary with some, shall we say "archived" media? Launch DVD Player and then from the File menu select Open DVD Media. Browse for the video_ts folder, and hit Open.

Region Settings are an unfortunate piece of paranoia from the movie industry. They wanted more control over distribution of video throughout the world, so they broke the world up into 6 regions. Usually its not an issue - all the DVDs you buy in the US will be Region 1. But, lets say there's some foreign film you want to see that isn't released in US/Canada. Its difficult to get a DVD from another region and play it on your own DVD player (there are hacks available, but I'm not going into that here). There's a good chunk of info about DVD Regions, and DVDs in general here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd_region

MPlayer and VLC (http://www.videolan.org/) are good alternative media players if you want to play with something else. VLC is extremely versatile in what it can play and what it can do - it can even be used to stream media over a network or the Internet. I use it to stream y100rocks.com through my home computer to get around my office firewall ;-}

[TiVoEvan74]

Thanks for the wonderfully detailed response. That clarifies a lot for me. Appreciate it.

[TydalForce]

I'm good at giving overly-worded explanations, usually boring the audience by the end...

glad you found my post useful (c:

[mike1700]

Just found this forum after posting in coffeehouse.
Im finally getting ready to join the tivo world!! After much research im gonna buy the toshiba unit. I was gonna buy a panasonic dvr then the stand alone tivo unit.
Was told that the combo units can burn a 1 hr tv show in 15 minutes.
Thats abig plus . But then found out that those dvds wont play on macs.
There seems to be sum answers to those problems here.
But should i buy the toshiba or just the stand alone unit??
Im so undecided
I will be watching many dvds in my mac.
thanks so much

[rkester]

mike - the ones that dont play on macs seem to be brand specific or user specific issues. (And issues with Apples DVDplayer.app) I have no problems playing the discs i burn on my mac. i have ripped a few and watched some while chillin on the Mini with no problems.

[TydalForce]

i found your other post first, so i responded there.

i've burned 2 DVDs with my Humax, and my PowerBook plays them fine.

For the record, I used Verbatim DVD-R media

[TiVoEvan74]

It seems it's the DVD-RWs that give the Apple DVD Player the fits... for those, people recommended MPlayer.

So, don't let this hold you back; you'll love the TiVo and you will be able to watch things on your Mac!

[TydalForce]

ah interesting point; I have yet to try a -RW disc

Hopefully I'll remember to try that, I think one came with my TiVo

[megazone]

I've recorded DVDs for friends with Macs and they haven't had any trouble.

[TiVoEvan74]

Follow-up!

I earlier posted that the DVD Player on the Mac seemed to have trouble playing DVD-RWs recorded on a TiVo. Several people recommended MPlayer instead.

Discovered some interesting things today while testing a DVD-RW for a class:

1) First, DVD Player seems to launch a DVD-RW OK, but once I selected a show, nothing seemed to happen.

2) I tried MPlayer, but that didn't give me ANY control over which show to play; it simply started from the beginning.

At that point, I thought, "Oh, no! And I could easily have recorded these shows on a DVD-R!"

3) I then tried quitting DVD Player and launching it again. I then discovered something odd. After I selected a show to play, the screen was not refreshing--hence I could not see the Play menu choice on the screen. If I moved the mouse pointer over the usual area, it showed up! I could then click on it and play things back.

So, DVD Player definitely can play DVD-RWs recorded from a TiVo; one just needs to know to slide the pointer down OR simply press Return and it will start.

Note: If one tries the menu choice Open DVD Media, one gets an error message: "There was a problem opening the media. The media type is not supported". Just press OK and you'll get what you want!

4) Even the list of shows can come up blank at that point, but if you slide the mouse pointer over the screen, they will reappear. it seems that DVD Player fails to refresh the screen.

For your info: I'm using OS X 10.4.5 on an iBook G4 with 768K RAM. DVD Player 4.6.5.

What is absolutely wonderful about DVD Player is that you can set a series of bookmarks for playback. No more fast forwarding or trying to remember where to go next.