Region code free external DVD drive?

[kristoffer4]

Do anyone here has experience with buying a external DVD drive and flashing the firmware so that you can DVDs from anywhere in the world?
I live in Europe and have a lot of R1 US DVDs but currently I can't watch these on my mac.

 

[Negritude]

This is all highly dependent on the model of drive and whether any region-free firmware is available to flash it. Suggest you peruse the CDFreaks/MyCE and RPC1 forums before you even think about buying anything.

 

[quasinormal]

The OS X DVD app only supports internal drives. The OS X installer will not install the DVD app if no internal drive is installed and it won't play DVDs on an external drive.

Apparently VLC player ignores the hardware region setting.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/508049/

 

[tvcbarbeau]

Region Free external Drive

I'm having a very similar problem.

I live in the US and buy many European and Japanese DVDs that are PAL and different Regions. Have a Macbook and an older G5 Tower, use mac the ripper to extract and Handbrake to convert to mp4s. I'm a video DJ and need to use these vids in my sets. I've reached my limit on changing the region code on both computers. I've done the research and it seems both of these computers don't have the right drives to flash and reset the firmware.

Can anyone possibly point me in the direction of an external firewire cd/dvd burner that is region free or can be made into one.

macbook
Matshita CD-RW CW-8221
Firmware Revsion GA0J

G5
HL-DT ST DVD-RW GWA-4165B
Firmware Revision Q0002

 

[kpgh554]

you could try one of these:-http://www.macupdate.com/find/mac/dvd%20region