HD DVD player and DASPI (macOS Catalina)

[MetalDave]

Hi, friends.

I'm in the middle of my HD DVD renaissance. In other words, I'm going through the box of HD DVD movies and ripping them to my NAS. Seems like a good use of the time.

I have a Mac with a fresh install of Catalina. The updated structure of macOS presents its share of challenges, but the basic MakeMKV installation seems like it worked just fine. While I can access the Blu-Ray player fine, my HD DVD player is raising a flag. When selecting the drive, I am getting the following messages:

Code: Select all

Optical drive "BD-ROM TOSHIBA DVD/HD X807616 MC08" opened in OS access mode.
It's highly recommended to install DASPI kernel extension to improve performance.
Optical drive "BD-RE HL-DT-ST BD-RE WH16NS40 1.02d" opened in OS access mode.

I had surmised this falls under the category of "rare occasions" (per the guidance for DASPI), and I need to install DASPI. Unfortunately, the DASPI v1.5 package doesn't seem to like Catalina. The installer pops up a dialog that says, "This package is incompatible with this version of macOS." It goes on to say, "The package is trying to install content to the system volume. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance."

With macOS Catalina (I'm running v10.15.4), Apple has worked to harden and protect the root volume. I suspect the DASPI installer has not been scripted to accommodate these changes.

What's the official advice here? #1) Do we think installing the DASPI driver will help to get the HD DVD player working? #2) Do we have an alternative installation method for DASPI?

Thanks in advance!

[nerdstation]

I'm doing exactly the same. Ripped several of my HD-DVDs, now hitting some issues. Hoping someone can help with DASPI on Catalina too!

[nerdstation]

By the way, MetalDave, I am also burning Blu-Ray backs of most of the titles I've been able to rip. I have been able to use TSMuxerGUI to do it. I have noticed some audio sync issues when I've tested the burned discs on VLC, but they usually work just fine on my XboxOne X. In TSMuxer I usually select remove pulldown for the video track, and then create an iso file which i can test before burning in VLC.

[MetalDave]

By the way, MetalDave, I am also burning Blu-Ray backs of most of the titles I've been able to rip.

That's interesting; I've never tried creating a Blu-ray disc from an MKV file. I wouldn't really know where to start with that process, so you're ahead of me there.

I've found there are pro's and con's to the HD-DVD published titles. It's nice that the majority have the metadata (e.g. chapter names) already include with the title. Unfortunately, you still have interlaced copies of the main title (which I don't think I've ever seen on a Blu-ray version of a theatrical title). They also made other choices on which soundtracks to include. For example, I've had titles that feature the Dolby Digital Plus soundtrack as the premium feature. (Yes, lossy audio as the premium feature.)

That said, there are some unique titles on HD-DVD in my collection that have proven to be great additions to my digital library, so the effort has been worthwhile.