DVD Region Help

[Pizster]

Hi guys,

I bought a brand new Macbook in November '09. I had bought some DVD's when I was over in America in August (I live in Ireland) and I wanted to play them on my Macbook but the problem was that my DVD region was set to region 2 and the DVD's were region 1.

That was no problem, as you have a choice to change your DVD region 5 times before it becomes locked. I went about using the DVD's but I needed to switch back to region 2 a few times.

I'm on my last chance and it is stuck on region 1. I need to switch it back to region 2 as most of my DVD's are region 2. Every time the menu box appears to switch regions I choose region 2 then the menu box and DVD player turn off.

I turn back on the DVD application and I go through the same process.

Why won't it allow me to change my DVD region? It says I have one more chance to change it before it becomes locked.

Pizster.

 

[Makosuke]

Could be that DVD player is just mis-reporting the number of times it can be changed, and you've already used them up. The only way to reset the count is to find some hacked firmware for the drive, since the region code is stored on the drive itself. Such things exist, but can be a pain to deal with if you're not technically savvy.

That said, there are much easier work-arounds. It's not as hard as it sounds because while the drive itself has the region code in it, it will happily read data off any disc if the software doesn't care about the region code matching the disc.

Therefore, you can play the discs with VLC, which shouldn't care in the least what region the drive or discs are.

Alternately, you can use something like MacTheRipper to rip the discs to the hard drive and/or duplicate them, and remove the region code in the process. Again, the region of the disc or drive shouldn't make any difference in this process.

Here's an article with a lot more info on the topic:

http://lowendmac.com/fishkin/08af/region-free-dvd-mac.html