I had an embarressing experiance with my girlfriend this weekend when we wanted to watch a movie I had netflixxed. I only have my 360 and Mini on my TV. I almost NEVER watch movies from the DVD itself and prefer to rip it to my 2TB server first, but this was a newer movie that MacThe Ripper was having problems with so I kept it around a little longer from Netflix.

I popped it in the Mini, tried fast fowarding through the intro loading screen, and the DVD ran in a loop on the loading screen of the menu without loading the menu. Wasted 5 minutes dicking around with it - it was a DVD player application issue.

Why is it embaressing? Girlfriend lives 8 hours away and drives to see me for 2 days once a month. It makes me look like an ******* to have a $5k system and have the stupid DVD Player application not work well.

So I am wondering if I should add a regular DVD player to my setup to watch DVDs. Hopefully one with modified firmware such that I can fast forward through FBI warnings. The ironic thing is that the reason I rip the movie and violate the FBI warning is because the FBI warning is so irritating and wasteful.

I use a standalone DVD player with my system because the deinterlacing performance is better. The 360 is pretty good too, better than the mini IMO.

Did your 360 play the DVD?

One “quirk” of the Apple DVD player I experienced when I first got my mini is that you have to set the DVD region with the first disc you play. If you just use Front Row, you don’t get an appropriate prompt and it just errors.

which Mini? what disc? which version of MTR?

But yes, like pdubyu I've kept good upconverting dvd players connected to my HDTVs, less for backup and more for non-Region 1 discs and those times when I want the best video quality out of a dvd. (Not TV shows, that's all high def.)

Sometimes convenience trumps quality, and I'm happy just to queue something up off a storage volume.

It's very easy to get cavalier about MactheRipper, it works that fast and well. But it isn't foolproof, so your post is a good reminder for everyone to check their backups and verify any burned copies. Just fyi, there hasn't been a disc I haven't been able to rip at least in full disc extraction mode--the few initial exceptions I've encountered worked by trying it in a different drive or with an earlier version of MTR. But, fact is there are going to be some titles that you can't simply and easily extract the main feature from or bypass the UOPs, and that require a more sophisticated approach.

If you have a bunch of different versions and other ripping software installed, you may need to trash different preferences, then verify/repair permissions as well.

I tend not to rip rentals, though, so I usually have plenty of time to research and figure out what has to be defeated.

I too have an external DVD player (Sony NS75H) that I use instead of DVD Player. The Sony has a much more robust remote control, I think the picture is better (but that's subjective, not extensively tested), and I've seen a few cases where DVD menus seemed to work better on the Sony. I'm not ripping DVDs, so the Mini is mostly used for movie trailers, personal or iTunes movies, photo albums, etc. - i.e. Front Row with no enhancements.

Doug

Why is it embaressing? Girlfriend lives 8 hours away and drives to see me for 2 days once a month. It makes me look like an ******* to have a $5k system and have the stupid DVD Player application not work well.

What might make you look like an ************ is the fact that you even bother to watch a movie under these circumstances! :p

Did you try cleaning the disk? I've had numerous NetFlix DVDs that had issues playing in FrontRow/DVD Player but after a good cleaning worked OK.