[Phoenix]

I was wondering what people thought of Apple's DVD player that ships with all it's computers. There's a few things that annoy me. The main one being the fact that when you are playing the movie and you want to skip ahead, there is very little control. You can skip chapters, or by 4x ( i know you can select up to 32x, but you can only select one at a time), but other than that you're stuck. I often get given DVD's at work with no chapters that run for upwards of 45mins. This gets frustrating sitting there waiting to go through all of that when i know i need to get towards the end of the video. Then i may need to see a part a few minutes back and can't get very accurate if i have set it to 32x, so i set it back to 4x. It's a bit of a pain.

Am i just not seeing how to do this or can't it be done? I remember using a DVD software on the PC that had a bar on the controls that let you click along it and it represented the time of the DVD. So you could click half way along and immediately go to the half way mark. Can this be done with Apple's DVD player?

If not, is there another one other people use?

Are other people frustrated with this product too? I know it might be a bit petty but the bar i mentioned was very handy. There are some other things but they are small too and not important, just annoying.

[screensaver400]

You could try VLC, but it isnt as polished as DVD Player or Quicktime.

[Bamrae]

Have not had any problems or issues with mine.

[intlplby]

i have the same problems... heck i had that problem today.... VLC is much more likely to recover from disc errors as well..... DVD player on the other hand just crashes out or freezes up

[Brad]

I've wished for a timeline bar too. It doesn't make sense that it's not there since every other Apple media app has one (QuickTime Player, iTunes).

It's never bothered me enough to give it up cold turkey, though. I've never been able to get VLC to consistently play some DVDs correctly (often it'll get confused and loop a menu or opening chapter); so, I use Apple's DVD Player by default.

[Phoenix]

Yeah i use it for lack of options, but i wonder when it was last updated with any serious additions. Is it something that has stagnated for a long time?

[Brad]

Not really. 10.4 brought new features to DVD Player in the image and sound controls and maybe elsewhere too. So, there are definitely still developers working on it.

[Jason]

I really like DVD Player and use it quite often. I love the bookmark function and the overall polished presentation of the app. I also love how you can have a minimzed window still playing in the dock if you have the graphical capabilty.

[L'Angelo Misterioso]

you can set chapters to quickly skip to sections.

DVD Player has made great gains recently but has a ways to go in the feature gain department to match competitors. With Apple taking new focus on home entertainment and Front Row I would expect DVD player to become a much more powerful and satisfying app soon. Ideally the interface will be changed to make it much more remote friendly for use with Front Row. Right now, dvd playback with Front Row seems kind of hackish.

[BarracksSi]

Originally Posted by trav You can skip chapters, or by 4x ( i know you can select up to 32x, but you can only select one at a time), but other than that you're stuck.

I don't know why it's not in the menus, but command-arrow forward & back will let you choose the scan rate. It'll start scanning at whatever you've chosen as a default, but press again to change to double the speed (up to 32x).

Works on the Team America DVD I've got in my iBook now...

(edit -- to be clear, that's command-arrow, without the shift key)

[Luca]

When I play a DVD that has a label on it, my poor Mac mini chokes to death. However, it can recover pretty easily as long as I'm using VLC. DVD Player must be written pretty badly because when it starts acting up, it can often take five minutes or more to just eject the disc. VLC spits it out right away though.

Finder seems to suffer from the same "but I want to finish up!" affliction.