Region Codes

[Shaun.P]

I live in the UK (Region 2 for DVD) and I would like to buy some Region 1 Frasier DVDs from Amazon (Only up to Season 4 has been released in the UK, but nearly up to 7 in the USA).

My Mac has a Pioneer DVD-RW drive (either 108 or 109 which I fitted myself). Is it possible for it to be able to swap between regions seamlessly?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated,

Shaun.

 

[XNine]

Thsi is in the wrong forum. And yes, your DVD player will switch regions, but only 5 times. It's some kind of content protection in the drive. Are there ways around it? Yes. I would search MACUPDATE or VERSIONTRACKER for software that gets around this.

 

[Shaun.P]

Sorry but it says:

"Community Discussion (59 Viewing)
random discussions about anything"

But yeah I suppose it should be in the Mac Software or Hardware.

I tried versiontracker but couldn't find anything.

 

[aloofman]

Like he said, there are some ways around this. Search for software that specifically addresses the region issue.

 

[XNine]

Found on slash dot:

Until someone writes a script to do this, you may want to take a look at this normally hidden file:

/etc/authorization

(I use BBEdit...'Open Hidden Files'. I haven't tried changing this yet...I hack the hardware instead):

Starts at line 63...

<!-- Used by the dvd player to set the regioncode the first time
Note that changed the region code after it has been set requires a
different right (system.device.dvd.setregion.change)
Credentials remain valid indefinitely after they've been obtained.
An acquired credential is shared amongst all clients.
-->
<key>system.device.dvd.setregion.initial</key>
&n bsp; <dict>
<key>group</key>
<string>admin</string>
<key>shared</key>
<true/>
</dict>

My guess is you need to change the TRUE to FALSE. See if it works.

 

[greatdevourer]

That "5 times" isn't hardware, but software. If you re-install the OS, it'll forget all about it. What many of these peices of software do is reset the clicker back to 5, whereas some fiddle with drivers so it'll accept any. However, these are drive specific (for instance, no-one's made one for the drives in the new PowerBooks).

Although I have never tried, apparently VLC ignores this 5-times thingy and just watches the movie anyway

 

[BollywooD]

I just flashed my dvr-k05 to make it region free, and found regionx to "change" between regions.

I got DVRFlash 2.2 from here:

http://lasvegas.rpc1.org/

Found the updated firmware here:

http://tdb.rpc1.org/

and RegionX here:

http://xvi.rpc1.org/region.html

Oh yeah, check out these forums....

http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php



hope this helps.

 

[Nermal]

That "5 times" isn't hardware, but software. If you re-install the OS, it'll forget all about it.

That's completely wrong. The counter is in the drive itself. Technically it's software, but it's stored on the DVD drive rather than your hard drive. This type of "software on hardware" is called "firmware"

 

[MrSmith]

Couldn't you just extract it with MacTheRipper (setting the new region to 2) then use Toast or Disk Utility to either burn it as a disk image or straight to DVD disc?

I guess you'd need to change the CD/DVD system prefs so DVD player doesn't open when you insert a recorded DVD??