Ask Dave Taylor: Tech and Business

Monday

Tiger's DVD Player won't play VIDEO_TS files?

I have a powerbook g4 titanium , 60 GB HD, 512 MB ram, 1Ghz processor. I use the program DVD Backup to put dvd's on my desktop as TS folders. It has served me well on business trips, bored meetings, etc. I recently upgraded to Tiger and now I can not watch the created VIDEO_TS folders on the DVD player. What is the deal?

Thank you for asking this particular question. As it turns out, I, um, made a personal backup copy of a Disney DVD onto my laptop back when it was running Panther, and it worked fine with the Panther DVD Player.

Based on your question, I checked it out in Tiger, and you're absolutely right! The Open VIDEO_TS... option on the File menu has been quietly renamed Open DVD Media... and you're right, it no longer opens and works with VIDEO_TS folders. Isn't that interesting?

Fortunately, it's not a show-stopper, because there's a great piece of freeware that you should already have on your Mac that plays oodles of different video and audio formats, far more than QuickTime and DVD Player...