Some Pioneer Blu-ray drives don't work in macOS Ventura 13.2

Users are encountering an error when trying to use select Pioneer Blu-ray and optical drives, seemingly starting with macOS Ventura 13.2.

Multiple posts across support forums and an official message from Pioneer indicates that owners of select Pioneer Blu-ray or optical drives shouldn't update to macOS Ventura 13.2. One post shows an error reading "the volume key is unknown to the disc - video can't be decrypted."

Reports seem to specifically mention the Pioneer BDR-XD07TUHD Blu-ray optical drive, but it could affect others. Apple hasn't made a public statement on the matter.

A notice on the Pioneer website warns users of the issue:

We have confirmed that our drives are not recognized by macOS Ventura 13.2 released by Apple on January 23. We are currently investigating this symptom. We would like to ask our customers who are using our drives to refrain from updating to macOS Ventura 13.2.

The first report of the issue was by MacRumors on Friday. Additional discussions of the issue can be found on Reddit, Twitter, and the Apple Support Community.

With Pioneer aware of the issue, it is likely that Apple will provide a fix for the drives in an upcoming update. Apple is expected to provide macOS Ventura 13.2.1 sometime in February.

4 Comments

entropys 4303 comments · 13 Years

About 1 year ago

Well, that is inconvenient.

I am also a bit confused as to the OS development pathway that led to it being broken. Bad, bad Apple!

FileMakerFeller 1561 comments · 6 Years

entropys said:

Well, that is inconvenient.

I am also a bit confused as to the OS development pathway that led to it being broken. Bad, bad Apple!

Bit early to be blaming Apple for a poor development choice without knowing exactly what was changed and why that caused the issue. Are other Blu-ray drives suffering from the same problem? Do the Pioneer drives make use of code that doesn't comply with Apple's APIs in a robust manner?

I highly doubt that pioneer drivers for their external bluray players have changed. Why would they? The only change is the OS version.

ToddRuel 1 comment · 1 Year

I have a Mac Studio Ultra and a Pioneer BDR-XD05W blu-ray drive. I just updated to 13.3.1.

I inserted a standard Bluray 25gb data disc that I burned a few years ago. It showed up on the desktop. Then I tried a Blu-ray dual layer disc. Then a quad layer disc. All showed up on the desktop.

I opened the files on each disc just to make sure everything still worked. They all opened.

This issue with Pioneer Bluray drives seems to be resolved with macOS Ventura 13.3.1.

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