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how do i make my dvd drive region free...?

1

124c41

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 7, 2010
65
0
loaded my 1st dvd of a sales promo , get a message to set (?) region b4 using ... wth ? why isn't this thing 'region-free' like my pc is ?
is there any way to set it up so its region free?
i get stuff from all over the world , so a region lock would be worse than useless...
(did a search , 20 pages of nothing)
 
I know there are a few region free firmwares for some Mac drives but not all of them. I think there is some sort of hack by using VLC that allows you to read the DVD without having to set the region, sort of VLC can read the DVD even if you have not chosen the region, you just let the region selection screen open and run VLC.
 
i looked for a 'mac' version of vlc several weeks ago and couldn't find one... am i missing something here ?
eta , apparently it exists , but its questionable if i can install it without a lot of grief , their instructions don't make much sense...
 
spinnerlys said:
So you're talking about the hack Nano2k mentioned I suppose.

You don't make it very clear with your kind of communication, but a guessing game is nice from time to time.
Click to expand...
don't know anything about a 'hack' as such , have dl'd the file , trying to figure what to do with it...
 
124c41 said:
don't know anything about a 'hack' as such , have dl'd the file , trying to figure what to do with it...
Click to expand...

QED as it seems.

So you were talking about VLC Player. You download the .dmg file, go to the Downloads folder in your Home folder, open the .dmg file (unless it opens itself), drag the VLC Player onto the Applications folder, wait for the copy process to finish, eject the .dmg from Devices (Sidebar in Finder) and use VLC.


And another standard reply:

Also have a look at the following links, as the information presented there might be helpful in your future endeavours into Mac OS X and could clear up initial confusion and may even prevent harm to your system or your files.

http://www.apple.com/support/switch101/
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/
 
124c41 said:
loaded my 1st dvd of a sales promo , get a message to set (?) region b4 using ... wth ? why isn't this thing 'region-free' like my pc is ?
is there any way to set it up so its region free?
i get stuff from all over the world , so a region lock would be worse than useless...
(did a search , 20 pages of nothing)
Click to expand...

I looked into this when I bought a Mac last year, the answer is, assuming you have a new Mac, that (1) its close to impossible, and (2) you run a very real risk of bricking your drive by flashing it as its much rare on Macs than Pcs to do this, so you are somewhat of a pioneer. My advice is to buy an external drive that can be flashed to region free. All you would need is a cheap reader, as you could write on the Macs internal one.
 
Tumbleweed666 said:
I looked into this when I bought a Mac last year, the answer is, assuming you have a new Mac, that (1) its close to impossible, and (2) you run a very real risk of bricking your drive by flashing it as its much rare on Macs than Pcs to do this, so you are somewhat of a pioneer. My advice is to buy an external drive that can be flashed to region free. All you would need is a cheap reader, as you could write on the Macs internal one.
Click to expand...
thanks...
 
surflordca said:
Don't know if this is possible but someone might know here. Can you make your DVD drive region free through Windows. Will it work on the Mac than. If so this link might be useful.

http://www.dvdexploder.com/
Click to expand...

I'm sure I read somewhere that low level software such as dvd***** doesn't work under Windows, even if its running natively, eg not as a VM. I cant recall why, but I'm sure, if it was possible, I'd have seen it mentioned a lot when I did the same searches as the OP 9 months ago.
 
You should search the forums. This has been discussed many times before.

Long story short: no.

Most modern slot-loading drives are not able to be made region-free as they are locked in the firmware of the drive. Unless you can change the firmware (it happens but not often on Mac drives), no software, even rippers that read the drive as data, on OSX or Windows, can read the DVDs in a useful fashion. Sorry.

More info at rpc1.org
 
This is all true; however, you can reset the region of your drive a limited number of times (5, i think) before it will lock into the final one. This may be useful if, for example, you're in England and want to rip a bunch of dvds all at once, but obviously not if you want to be buying a bunch of dvds from various places and use them whenever you want.

I read somewhere when I was looking into it that you can reset the number of region changes back to zero, but I never figured out how. There's a video forum out there that is oriented around a/v hardware and software that has a whole section of manuals on how to do all of this, do some googling and you should be able to find it. You might find an answer there.
 
Having similar issue and chanced upon this thread after doing some Googling.

Does anyone know a region-free DVD player software? Have VLC, but it shows me errors when I try and play the DVD. Unless I'm doing something wrong...
 
blocpartier86 said:
Having similar issue and chanced upon this thread after doing some Googling.

Does anyone know a region-free DVD player software? Have VLC, but it shows me errors when I try and play the DVD. Unless I'm doing something wrong...
Click to expand...

Have you read the thread already?

Doing that would have shown you, that the firmware of the DVD drive is responsible for the region lock. The firmware is stored on the DVD drive, so in oder to change that, there may be a hack to do that. There are links in this thread that might help you with your drive, but most likely it won't.

Better get an external region free DVD reader.
 
wackymacky said:
I presume that youi own the DVD? And if it is propotional it may not be covered by copywright restriction?

You could always rip a back-up ccopy for personal use and re-burn it with the region code removed.
Click to expand...

How can one rip a region 1 DVD with a region 2 drive? (Unless you change the region code of course, but that is limited to five changes.)

That's what this thread is all about, to enable reading other-region DVDs on the built in DVD drive.
Ripping is copying and removing copy protection and the region lock, but to be able to rip a DVD the drive has to able to read it.
 
flopticalcube said:
You can only rip it if the drive is all ready region free. Rippers only produce garbage on region-locked drives with DVDs of other regions.
Click to expand...

No, not true.

In NZ (region 4) i have backed up my private DVD's with region 1 disks, by ripping them with Mac The Ripper, setting to zone-free and then used popcorn to re-burn them.

My understanding is it's the DVD software where the issue is, so if you turn off the auto-load feature of the dvd-player then it works.
 
spinnerlys said:
And you haven't changed the region code?
Click to expand...

No,

I've done this with both region 1 and 2 disks, with the original setting on my DVD drive being 4.

As I said, I have turned off the auto-load for the DVD player software so it doesn't prompt me that the region is wrong.

I have backed up several dvd's this way ( >20), (well over the 5 changes your'e allowed)
 
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