We have now traced the problem back to our Superdrives. All nine of our Mac Intels have this drive:
OPTIARC DVD RW AD-7170A with Firmware Revision 1.N8
When burned with this internal Superdrive, the resultant DVDs are unreliable. Most of those discs break on Windows machines, some fail to start up even in a set-top player. Occasionally you can burn one that works everywhere, but no burn method we have tried works consistently.
Here are some of the methods we tried:
burning straight from DVDSP
burning with an image in Disk Utility
burning with an image in Toast 8
burning with a VIDEO_TS folder in Toast 8
All of those failed. But then we tried those same methods using the very same computers, but using another drive -- we happen to have an external Sony DVD burner. Every disc made by our external drive worked reliably, on all machines.
I have since searched the Apple user groups, and have found these less than glowing reports about these Optiarc drives:
SONY/NEC OPTIARC AD-7170A PROBLEMS
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4695362
CD/DVD SPITS OUT ON PPC G5 THAT WAS BURNED ON A MAC PRO
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5437560�
DVD PLAYER OR SUPERDRIVE LIMITATIONS?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5939972�
IDVD INCOMPATIBILITY WITH SONY DVD PLAYER
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5349478�
So, you might anticipate that I am curious. In your Intel Mac do you have an Optiarc superdrive, or is yours the Pioneer?
In the short term, we are all sharing our external DVD burner. To actually fix the problem, we are ordering Pioneer drives for all of our computers. We have Applecare, but I have been told that if they replace the drives, they will be as likely as not to replace them with more Optiarc drives. And I don't feel like experimenting any more.
Good luck,
Bob
