Hey crewz, Curious, i have a Pioneer DVR-109 in a peacee and a DVR-KO4L in my Powerbook. I have this rogue disc, origin unknown, perhaps some disk from Asia i think it has pretty girls on it with no clothes ;-). Anyways when i put the disc in the Powerbook it wont mount and spits the disk out. I put it in a PC an the disc spins up, nothing mounts then i think either the machine will eventually spit it out or just report it cant recognize the disk. This same disk will play an a 75$ set top play with no problems. The inability for these mentioned Pioneer drives have something to do with media compatibility? should i buy a DVD-R from another manufacturer like Plextor with some hope of it reading the disk? I just want to take an image then probably discard the original since its useless to me if it wont work on my powerbook.
Problems with Asian DVDs in computer drives are quite common. Sometimes they'll play but won't rip and other times they refuse to play at all as you've already found out. My best guess is that they are a little looser with standards and quality than most factory DVDs.