After some googling, I found
This Page states:
"The optical drives in the new iMac G5s do not allow software to read DVDs raw unless the DVD and the drive region settings match. The libdvdcss library is unable to access the DVD as a block device and is virtually unusable. This could be an issue with all new Apple hardware and there is no solution at present."
Some further searching of the VLC forums indicates recent drives prevent VLC from playing any region.. it sucks, but looks like that's it...
Not good! If this is the case I suppose you could try finding a dirt cheap firewire DVD drive... (or enclosure+drive)? Otherwise a firmware hack may be your only option (sorry Counterfit, looks like I have to eat humble pie here!
) but that is always risky and shouldn't be attempted unless you can live without the drive if it goes wrong.
*rants* It's insane of course, region coding is evil, and even more stupid in international computers that can run in any country than in DVD players designed for a specific market...*snip*