Region free DVD player ?

[ocgirl]

Hello,

I have a Macbook Pro (2011) bought in Canada and when I inserted my european DVD it asked me to change the region and I realized that I could just do this 5 times.

It is very annoying as half of my DVDs are from Europe, and the rest from North America, so is there any way to avoid that region thingy?
Why on earth would they do such a thing? In my opinion, that would just lead people to illegally download instead

Anyway, if there's a program/software, I would be very happy to know about it.

PS: tried VLC but it doesn't launch and a yellow rectangle appears on the left of the playlist.

Thank you!

 

[geoffreak]

I thought I remembered reading that even after a DVD player in a Mac is locked, you can still use DVD ripping applications just fine. I could be completely wrong though.

An option that I'm much more confident would work is to buy an external DVD player (region free ones exist) and have each DVD player locked to a specific region. It's a hassle, but you can blame the MPAA.

EDIT: Found this, but can't confirm accuracy.
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090226100755899

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Yeh this was a problem I encountered moving from PC to Mac , there is some great free region software on Win that just doesn't exist on Mac, and too many worries about bricking the internal DVD drive with the few solutions out there. I agree that the answer is a cheap external drive dedicated to a region, especially if you only have two regions to contend with.
And I think you are correct it does encourage illegal downloads.

 

[bmcgonag]

I don't know the answer to this part, but is it the drive itself? or the player software that demands you change?

If it's just in the software, then disable autoplay for DVDs inserted by the DVD Player software, and try VLC for OS X.

It plays DVDs fine, just not sure if it will care about region or not.

 

[Dave Braine]

You can use VLC to play dvds.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

 

[ocgirl]

Hi, thank you for your suggestions.

When I inserted my DVD in, a window poped up asking me to choose the region. I tried closing the window and then opening VLC but nothing happened (it appeared on the playlist but then nothing else). When I clicked it on the playlist it would just do nothing. I don't know if this is because I still have a number of changes available?

Also, if I were to use windows, and install a region-free software, would that then work or do I need a real PC ?

Thank you

 

[bmcgonag]

Found some potential answers from some older blog posts. Not sure apple still uses the Matsushita DVD drives, but they are apparently hardware locked down, and once you set the DVD region the first time, you have to flash the firmware of the drive to reset it basically.

Then there is some software called RegionX that allows you to switch back and forth as much as you want, and you will be able to use VLC to play your DVDs.

I know it's not a ton of help, but maybe you'll find a solution. Here's a link.

http://macnewbie.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/region-free-dvd-on-macs/

Hope it helps

 

[fishcake]

Region free dvd

Why do dvd's have region codes - it's the usual story of business before customer in Hollywood. The film companies aren't global, they license the films out to regional distributors I believe, so if you can buy a North American dvd in Europe, you're cutting out the european licensee. Meanwhile the customer lives in a 'global' marketplace...

To make you're dvd drive region free you need to update the firmware, which may not be possible if the drive hasn't been hacked. The best place to go is rpc1.org to see if firmware is available. Warning, if the firmware process fails you'll brick your dvd drive.

If you successfully update your dvd firmware you are still offered the 5 changes to the dvd region when you play dvd's from different regions, but using Region X mentioned above you can reset the count so you never hit the 5 times limit and lock the region.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

As a previous poster indicates but doesn't make explicit, RegionX is no use unless you can flash the firmware.

When I looked into this a couple of years ago all the firmware out there was for older drives, and frankly for $30 it didn't seem worth risking bricking my drive.

Also, every machine brings out a new make or model of superdrive so it seems, so its a PITA for the coders to keep up. This is one area where windows is definitely superior and its possible that running win natively and then a windows solution might do it. But is it really worth the hassle?