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DVD Playback on VGA display STILL not working
Authored by: redfusion on Feb 20, '02 10:34:30AM

I was quite excited this morning to see that the latest update included support for "DVD Playback on external VGA displays on PowerBook G4"... unfortunately it doesn't seem to work! I still get a pop-up box from DVD Player telling me my machine configuration isn't supported.

Has anyone else experienced a similar result after installing 10.1.3?



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DVD Playback on VGA display STILL not working
Authored by: e_clark on Feb 20, '02 01:17:05PM
I had similar problems running the DVD player app on my PBG4, only the app refused to run at all, giving that "Configuration not supported" error. It turns out I had changed ownership on the app and it's files, and that's why it was refusing to run. I used
sudo chown -R root.admin "DVD Player.app"

to fix the problem, and it seems to work fine now.

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DVD Playback on VGA display STILL not working
Authored by: JustyTylor on Feb 20, '02 08:12:15PM

Yeah, I was misled by this as well. I let the AppleCare Knowledgebase know that they're reporting wrong information if they tell us that it's fixed, especially when it's apparently broken for other, G4-Tower based dual monitor configurations as well (there's a guy on MacCentral who says that DVD support on his tower because he has two 17" monitors.)



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It does work, but there's a trick!
Authored by: pete_yandell on Feb 20, '02 09:48:11PM

It all depends on monitor resolutions.

I have an original Powerbook G4 (400MHz) with an Apple 21" monitor connected and set as my main display.

If I switch the 21" down to 1152x870 and have both monitors in thousands of colours, I can play DVDs in a window on the 21".

If I then switch the laptop screen down to 800x600 stretched, I can play DVDs full screen on the 21".

Yes, this sucks, and I don't know why I can't drag the DVD player window onto the laptop screen, and wouldn't it be nice if the DVD player worked this out for you and popped a box saying that you should switch resolutions? But hell, it's better than the reboot I had to do before.



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Good Hint, Thanks Pete!
Authored by: JustyTylor on Feb 21, '02 12:35:10AM

Yeah, it's a pain, but at least it works in some capacity. Now if they could just get it supported without us worrying about Thousands or Millions of colors (Near as I can tell, the "main" display--that is, the one you want to view DVDs on--can be in millions of colors, but you *have* to put the LCD panel into Thousands. I'm currently running my PowerBook G4 LCD panel in native resolution with thousands of colors, and my TV is in 640x480 in millions of colors. There are probably issues with VRAM allocation or something. Now, if only they'd allow overscanning... And, of course, I'm still damn impressed at how smooth DVD 3.0's playback is: not a single stutter.



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