External Optic drive player

Unless there’s still modern applications Apple develops that need an Apple blessed drive with the "correct" firmware, I have not seen or heard of that problem with 3rd party units in quite a few years after iLife '09 came out ('08 still often needed the blessed drive). The reason for this change was because of the MBA, since these didn’t have an internal drive Apple could bless for iDVD direct burn support).

Since it hasn’t been a problem for at least 12 years, it sounds like you’re running one of the legacy application from that time period when this was a problem. I’m also thinking it may be a 3rd party app if it cares about blessed by Apple firmware on a machine that’s way too new for it to matter with 1st party programs, but these are rare.

Post a screenshot of the error and program that’s giving you this error. I haven’t heard of this issue with 3rd party drives in years. Adding images to an existing question

@artistcain Any other 3rd party drive will work if you need an external for whatever reason you need it. You can’t use the Apple external DVD drive as that was originally designed for the MBA and the rMBP when they came out. However, any 3rd party drive is fair game in MacOS. There may be a handful that don’t work, but that’s the exception, not the rule. If you’re concerned about the handful of bad drives, try to buy one I've found works with a proper return policy just in case, or the drive is no longer sold.

If the one you get is Lightscribe ready, it won't hurt compatibility - it will work as if it doesn’t have it, but you probably won’t see the Lightscribe function being useful. These days, the media needed to use it is price gouged and the software requires compromising system security since SIP needs to be disabled. HP stopped supporting it in ~2013.

I use this with my 2011 13” Pro running High Sierra and it behaves perfectly fine: MRX-650LE V7 (Non Lightscribe) - Memorex (OLD DRIVE, NO LONGER SOLD NEW - MAY BE AVAILABLE USED). I am no longer testing for this since the bad drives are a known distant memory at this point.