Why won't my MacBook play DVD's???

It's possible that the drive could be damaged (especially if it worked before) or simply defective (if it never worked). If it's still under warranty or AppleCare, bring it with a commercial DVD (for demonstration purposes) down to your local Apple Store or authorized repair center. If you can duplicate the problem in front of an Apple Genius (or authorized repair technician), they will have to repair it.

I cannot get my DVDs to play on my big recent Mac (how come Macs don't have model numbers on them) either. CDs play fine via iTunes, so the drive works fine. No idea what to do. DVDs always play on my Windows machines.

i'm having similar problem with my macbook. it did play dvd before. but now no more. why? help!!!

My original drive that shipped with a macbook (2.2GHz/120GB/1GB) couldn't even read CDs or DVDs after a while. Originally it only couldn't play DVDs and reluctantly accepted any optical media (i.e. it kept spitting them out and me keeping on inserting it until it mounted on the desktop).
Anyway it was an LG GSA-S10N. I eventually decided that the drive itself was stuffed, so I bought a replacement drive from eBay and swapped them out myself for a Mashita. Beware though, the mashitas tend to have a really bad design problem; when something is obstructing the drive entrance when ejecting, it doesn't stop ejecting but forces itself to its limits until the drive mechanism snaps.

But other than that, my Macbook can play DVDs. It's more of a hardware problem.

a similar issue i have at hand now is the case of a lady who just bought a MacBook. it mistakenly fell from her hands on concrete floor and thereafter she couldnt play dvd. she never did. whenever she insert a dvd disk, it just make some vibrating noise and never play.

she wants me to help her out as an IT guy. having tried working on it for awhile, i'm concluding the harddrive is damaged.

does yuo guys think the drive is damaged?

james.

oopps. sorry. i mean the dvd drive may have damaged.

my macbook won't play dvd's anymore all of a sudden. I'm figuring from the comments that maybe i have placed it down too hard at some point and injured its insides. gutted!

@James (the original james, second post)
Sadly, I live in the middle of nowhere (Montana) and we don't have apple stores with genius bars. Our apple stores are retailers that have an apple section or campus book stores that sell apple products. It's also my main design computer so I can't be without it for two weeks. Sucks.

Although, for those of you with burnt out drives that need to load software and happen to have another mac around, you can simply boot the other mac in target disk mode (you'll need a firewire cable -- boot while holding t) and the mac your using will mount the harddrive and disk drives of the target mac seamlessly. This also works for OS installs, I've done it plenty of times. All in all, I've been able to cope... Thanks to my other macs.

I'm way past applecare, so I suppose I should just buy the new drive and install it myself. They seem to be getting cheaper on eBay these days.

why would my macbook play some dvd's and spit out others?

i just bought a used macbook g3 and i brought it home and it will not play dvds, the guy said that he watched dvds all the time but now it wont! this is my first mac and i am really dissapointed that it has a problem such as this! so if anyone could help out it would be greatly appreciated!!! thanks.

@jacob perts
the ibook g3's (i assume thats what you mean by macbook g3) were not shipped with dvd drives standard... only either as aftermarket parts or as an upgrade option on the highest-end units. i would check your apple menu... APPLE > about this mac > more info....

and then in the system profiler (when it pops up) there should be a selection that reads "Disc Burning"..... once you have that selected, on the right side in the list that pops up, there should be an item that says "Reads DVD"... it will say either "Yes" or "No" next to it.

make sure you check that before you assume that the "dvd" drive is broken. sometimes used car dealers have similar tactics.... be informed....

thanks i now know i was lied to! thank you for your help!
p.s. can you buy dvd drives for the g3??

@jacob perts
no problem dude. knowledge is power! you can snag cd-rw/dvds for those iBook g3s on eBay for around $25. I've installed them myself, but it's not necessarily easy... especially if you've never taken apart a laptop before. these things do play dvds rather well, I upgraded mine a while ago.

if you need a service manual or anything to take it apart, just let me know.

yeah that would be really helpful!!!! I didnt get anything with the computer except the power cord!! is there anything specific I need to look for, for the drive???