This article is out of date but I have posted an updated summary so please continue the conversation over here.
So I was dissapointed to see that there seems to be no way to easily make the MacBook Pro’s DVD drive region free which unfortunately renders about half of the DVD’s I own completely useless. In these days of £20 multi-region DVD players this is not really on, and it is especially disappointing since on older PowerBooks VLC multi-region playback seemed to work so it means that additional time and effort is still being put into this pointless exercise to keep the movie companies happy.
With VLC for Mac out of the picture, the only possible solution was looking like a warranty voiding firmware hack which may or may not even exist (it is hard to tell if the ones that are being referred to on the internet are for older machines), certainly not worth the risk of a dead, out of warranty DVD drive.
So… no way forward with multi-region DVD playing :(
Unless, Windows to the rescue!!! VLC works like a dream playing any region DVD’s on Windows and has a really smart network streaming system built into it. So I popped the DVD in on my Windows PC, fired up VLC and ticked that little “Stream Output” button, select to stream over UDP and entered the IP address of the Mac to stream to:
On my Mac, also fired up VLC (using one of the universal binary nightly beta builds, which do seem to be generally very stable), select “Open Network…” and click OK.
Multi-Region DVD playback on a MacBook Pro, solved :)
PS. Yes there is a heavy dose of sarcasm in the whole Windows to the rescue thing for those reading with a sense of humour failure :)
Technorati Tags: mac, macbook pro, os x, apple, dvd, region free, vlc, streaming
184 responses so far ↓
MCHIEN // April 21, 2006 at 7:33 pm
There’s a freeware program called MacTheRipper that will rip a copy of a DVD to your hard-drive, removing region codes and (optionally) macrovision in the process.
You can then watch your movie right off your hard-drive without any worries. Very useful for airplane viewing… since you don’t have to carry around DVD boxes, etc. :)
Net Crap (4/22) at Musings of a Chicagoan // April 22, 2006 at 5:17 am
[...] My Journey to Macintosh » Region free DVD on MacBook Pro - All you need is a Windows XP machine! “[I]t is especially disappointing since on older PowerBooks VLC multi-region playback seemed to work so it means that additional time and effort is still being put into this pointless exercise to keep the movie companies happy.” [...]
Danny Tuppeny // April 22, 2006 at 11:33 am
Windows to the rescue?
Avi Flax // April 23, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Hi, can you explain why VLC/Mac is out of the picture? I’m still a PPC user so… I’m unsure. Thanks!
macnewbie // April 23, 2006 at 8:10 pm
@Avi
Apparently on the PowerBooks (PPC machines) the DVD drive could be bypassed by VLC, unfortunately it seems they are using a different type of DVD drive in the MacBook Pro’s and the bypass in VLC doesnt work.
I hope they find a way around it, it really is a ridiculous restriction.
Avi Flax // April 24, 2006 at 2:31 am
Newbie, do you know where you got that information? Did you try it yourself? According to this thread VLC works fine to play any region DVD on an Intel iMac. Have you tried one of the VLC Nightlies?
macnewbie // April 24, 2006 at 5:50 am
I got this information from putting Region 1 DVD’s into my MacBook and having it fail to play in both DVD player (obviously) and VLC player (dissapointingly). It doesn’t give an error message in VLC, just shows the title of the DVD for a second, seeks back and forth a couple of times and then stops trying.
I am running a nightly build from a couple of days ago so I am running a very up to date version. I will try downloading last nights build.
What can I say, if it works for them then I am happy for them but surprised because it doesn’t work for me :(
macnewbie // April 24, 2006 at 5:56 am
I just downloaded the very latest nightly (24th April - trunk-intel-20060424-0048.dmg) and it still won’t play alternate region DVD’s.
jimmie // April 24, 2006 at 9:33 pm
http://www.powerbook-fr.com/dossiers/dvd_region_free_en_article30.html
I haven’t seen anyone working on the firmware unfortunately.
Avi Flax // April 24, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Well, that sucks. Thanks for humoring me!
macnewbie // April 26, 2006 at 7:22 am
@Avi:
No problem, and I agree it totally sucks
@jimmie:
Nice article, I will be watching that for updates
Hooch // May 7, 2006 at 10:09 am
I was hoping the solution was to use boot camp into XP, execute some sort of region free tool there, then boot back into OSX… That would have been way cool.
the brook » Unacceptable: Hardware region locking on Mac // May 9, 2006 at 11:01 am
[...] Not only non-Mac PCs, but even DVD-players and home theater systems for homes are totally region-free, and advertised as such. It seems that Macs are the only media devices left that have this arcane and insane locking mechanism and can’t be circumvented. One dude on the net has advertised a solution to the problem which basically says “Windows to the rescue!”: he actually uses VLC on Windows XP to output to a UDP stream and access the stream from his Mac using VLC. I can’t tell you how much that hurts. [...]
Avi Flax // May 9, 2006 at 8:55 pm
VLC 8.5 was officially released for Intel Macs a couple of days ago. Any chance you could give it a try and see what happens?
macnewbie // May 9, 2006 at 9:54 pm
Already did, unfortunately it is the same… still wont play alternate region discs :(
Avi Flax // May 10, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Hm, too bad.
Well, have you tried MacTheRipper? It’s quite fast! HandBrake rocks too…
macnewbie // May 10, 2006 at 7:54 pm
@Avi:
Yes, unfortunately MacTheRipper crashes as soon as you click “Go!” to rip the DVD, no error message just the apple “something went wrong” dialog.
I just tried Handbrake which looks great (although transcoding means a lengthy wait before watching a DVD of course) but unfortunately I get a “No Valid Title Found” error when trying 3 USA DVD’s in my machine.
I am not destined to watch Region 1 DVD’s on this mac!!!
onitake // May 16, 2006 at 3:50 pm
the problem with the late power-/i- and new macbooks is that they contain recent brands of matsushita (read: panasonic) dvd drives. those have a really nasty “feature” in their firmware that does an additional comparison of the dvd and drive regions. in case they don’t match, you only get errors out instead of data.
unfortunately, to day, no one has gotten his hands on original firmware to hack and make the drives usable.
the only solution seems to be pulling out the firmware stored on a drive itself and working with that - but noone has undertaken that task yet.
my words: shame on you panasonic, shame on you apple, for bothering honest consumers!
macnewbie // May 18, 2006 at 9:28 am
> shame on you panasonic, shame on you apple,
> for bothering honest consumers!
Absolutely, all this does is stop people from playing honestly purchased discs. Ironically, pirate copies have no such problems playing.
Avi Flax // May 19, 2006 at 2:33 am
Well, one way to confirm this would be to boot a Mac into Windows XP, open VLC, and try to play an other-region DVD with it. If it doesn’t work, then we’ve confirmed that the optical drive itself really just won’t provide those bits.
Alan Francis // May 22, 2006 at 9:54 am
MacTheRipper only works on a properly region coded drive however. ie If you want to rip, and de-region a R1 disc, you have to do it with an R1 drive.
I’m in the UK and my PowerBook is R2. I set my Imac to R1 so I could rip the other 50% of my discs on it and wantch them on my PowerBook.
As someone who regularly gives the CD and DVD industry 200 quid a month, I resent having to jump thrugh so many hoops to watch DVDs and listen to some “piracy proteced” CDs.
testy // May 28, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Hmm interesting choice…
Pay 20 quid and buy a legitimate DVD that WON’T PLAY ON MY MAC oooorrrrr pay 2 Quid for pirtae one that does :-(…..
George G // May 29, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Can somebody tell me why regions were invented in the beggining? Did they think that if I have a region 2 “Batman: that if I move to USA im going to buy another Region 1 “Batman” because of that?????
macnewbie // May 29, 2006 at 3:33 pm
As far as I know it was to keep the artificial release delays on movie releases.
George G // June 1, 2006 at 11:56 pm
It really is a pitty.. I use my Powerbook G4 for recording with Logic Pro when im out on trips, and I was getting ready to buy the Macbook Pro when all the third party’s upgraded to Intel, but I see there could be a lot of issues with the new computers… I really thought Steve Jobs should have made this transition much smoother and and easier on the customers… pitty..
Ian // June 2, 2006 at 10:34 am
The problem exists equally on PC laptops because most manufacturers use these stupid Matshita drives. On Windows AnyDVD works most of the time, but not 100% with these drives. Also on the PC laptops I can just buy any standard size drive and put it into the laptop. With the MacBook I think I am locked into buying from Apple.
Whoever at Matshita is responsible for this should be dragged into the street and hacked to death with machetes.
Why continue buying from the music and movie industries? I spent thousands on their products and in return they said F you. So now I buy only independent label music, and copy anything else. Movies I rent, and copy if I decide I want to see it again. I’m tired of the entertainment industries’ childish nonsense.
Miyamoto // June 4, 2006 at 4:07 pm
So far, the only thing that works on my MacBook Pro is Handbrake - it allowed me to rip & encode a region 2 DVD in my American MacBook Pro. I could then watch the resulting .avi file, or .mp4.
That’s a lengthy process (about 1 hr.) to watch a movie…but…at least there’s ONE option for the MacBook Pro with a MATSHITA UJ-857.
=======
My findings:
FIRST, you MUST disable autoplay for video DVDs in the System Preferences under “CDs & DVDs.” Set it to “Ignore.”
VLC will play the intros/menus, but then I get a warning that says this DVD player doesn’t match the region code.
MacTheRipper will rip, but the ripped file is unwatchable…
DVDBackUp just crashes before ripping.
MPlayer simply locks my machine every time.
=======
The file created with Handbrake will play in VLC. And…since you can specify file-size, you can make a very high-quality file, near DVD quality.
That’s the best I’ve got so far.
Miyamoto // June 5, 2006 at 9:34 pm
update.
I was able to play a different Region code 2 DVD on my American MacBook Pro using VLC…so it appears to depend on the disc.
Ian // June 6, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Just wondering how Handbrake can rip and encode if VLC etc. can’t bypass the Matshita protection?
Miyamoto // June 6, 2006 at 6:55 pm
don’t know, but it works. bizarre. it was a Japanese DVD that was supposedly “copy-protected.”
Alex // June 11, 2006 at 8:27 pm
asks for region changing on a zone 2 dvd (i have 4 left) but plays perfectly on VLC.
this means that VLC is working, right?
Miyamoto // June 12, 2006 at 10:47 am
i quit Apple’s DVD player before it asks for the region change. but even then, VLC would not play the disc in question. it plays the menu animation stuff, but then i get a special screen that says “This player is incompatible with the region marking of this disc.”
i now suspect this is disc-specific and possibly un-related to VLC. however, one should keep it in mind before adopting the “VLC will rescue me from all DRM” mindset when buying…
Tom Gowans // June 12, 2006 at 6:28 pm
OK, I am disappointed to read that the new MacBook Pro will not let me watch all my DVD’s (I live in Angola, work all up and down the West African coast and am currently sitting next to Lake Albert in Uganda so you can imagine I have quite a variety of regions) but……
I started with a Commodore 64 and went the windows 3 and onwards to XP route and am finally, utterly, totally and irretrievably p****d off with Windows. Yesteday was the last ‘effing time a machine will tell me, ‘oh, i’m so sorry, I have just suffered an irrecoverable error and I am going to have to shut the programme down, you know, the one with all that data you just pumped in, and, guess what, auto recover won’t work because when I reboot, I won’t start for a while and when I do, it won’t be there and later on you’ll find I have corrupted a few random files as well. Just to tease you a bit. You know you like it really’.
Well I don’t. I’m not some sleazy politician who likes to spend his lunchtimes getting spanked in Soho.
Must be a virus. Norton says no. Spyware? Several costly versions of spyware cleaning and I am satisfied can’t be that, Then, the final teaser, better lose a few hours downloading the latest windows and office security patches, after all, I did it a whole seven days ago so my system must be full of holes by now, only to get, ‘windows authentication has detirmined that you may have been the victim of software piracy…..please give us yer credit card details and uncle Bill will try and make it better’. Like ‘ell I will.
When I saw my colleague’s shiny new MacBook Pro, running MS Office software seamlessly and on our network, without hint of glitch or tremor and soooo fast (my laptop has 2.66Ghz and a gig of ram, it’ll fry an egg quickly but try working on graphics files) I thought that’s it.
Through the combined wonders of the internet and a charge card, one new MacBook Pro 17* plus all the necessary extras is on its way to me. I’ll spend a hundred or so bucks on an external DVD drive and stick it in the side pocket of the snazzy new MacBag to go with the iPod (in it’s snazzy incase, incase of what I wonder?). Eye wateringly expensive but I’m tired of driving around in a clapped out Ford, I want a Bentley now. I’ve worked for it, I deserve it.
I understand the frustrations of my esteemed fellow posters who in spite of making a not inconsiderable expense still cannot enjoy that single unit answer to their multi-media and workstation needs but, I assure you, in comparison to the years of torture, frustration and, not so very uncommonly, real grief when I lost something more than important, but dear to me (removable drive *:\ is not formatted, would you like windows to format it now? What? NO! FOR PITY’S SAKE NOOOoooo! IT’S MY BACK UP DRIVE!!!!!! Eject Eject oh please dear Lord let it Eject. And all the while that little drive light flickers and you know you’re stuffed), the fact that the ’super drive isn’t actually as super as we would like is the merest, trifling inconvenience. For me, a long suffering windows user anyway.
What I can’t understand is why Apple haven’t told us? By ‘us’ of course, I mean all the other okes who are still struggling. Why don’t Apple get on the telly and show some sweating sod desperately trying to get his PC laptop to boot up and then struggle to get it to behave while he gives his presentation and then lose the contract to some smooth chick with a MacBook running the same presentation software that he was using?
Just a thought ‘cos Apple just sold a MacBook Pro to me by the purest chance that I would run into someone else who was using one. Next to Lake Albert. In Uganda.
Now statistically, that’s fairly long odds on which to base a marketing strategy……
Miyamoto // June 13, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Tom Gowans - your post is awesome, and hilarious, and true. I still love my MacBook Pro for all the reasons you listed and more. But, I am a videophile, and will find a workaround…one way or the other.
macnewbie // June 13, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Great comment, Tom :)
kublakhan // June 17, 2006 at 8:28 pm
I have the same problems on my MacBook Pro. It’s because of the Matisha drive (this has long been a problem on the windows side). Discs coded for a different region will only not play when the disc also includes BAD SECTORS!
Now that I’ve figured that out I hope somebody can figure out how to solve the problem.
… just came back to the U.S. after a vacation in Germany - had problems there with R2 encoded discs on my Macbook… aargh! Dual booting doesn’t work either…
Digital Ramble » Blog Archive » untangling regional dvds restrictions // June 21, 2006 at 6:46 pm
[...] For Mac users, the picture is a little different. There are some programs out there but there don’t seem to be that many (and which seem to be for older versions), which puzzles me because OSX is Linux based, more or less. Some of the issues seem to revolve around which Mac one has, and which dvd drivers it has. VLC may work for some Mac users, but does not work for all. I did find this article which summed up the issues for mac users and described one solution the author worked out. I have also seen speculation that Mac’s new Bootcamp software might allow Mac users to run the Windows region free software + dvd playback to obtain similar results (but I did not find anything written up by anyone who’d tried it to see). [...]
Keith Cross // July 10, 2006 at 2:26 am
Does anyone know how one can change the region setting on the DVD drive. I can see that mine is set to Region 6 (out of the box, bought in the US…makes not sense…it should be Region 1), but I can’t find where I can change the setting. Unlike Tom’s globetrotting, I’ll be roaming the US at best and I just want to have Region 1. Any info would be greatly appreciated, but specific directions would be helpful..I’ve read tons of posts that mention it, but don’t actually describe how to do it other than scary, warranty nullifying firmware alterations…is that it? Help!
Michael Bramley // July 23, 2006 at 7:29 am
Hi
I’m wondering if there is actually that much point in getting upset and trying to RPC1 the UJ-857 inside the new Intel Macs when AFAIK, using Windows XP, DVD +CSS Region Free (or DVD Idle Pro) & Cyberlink PowerDVD will do the job much better than any DVD player on Mac OS X. DVD +CSS Region Free makes an RPC2 drive seem like an RPC1 without actually altering the drives firmware.
I know this is a bit of a pain and it would be cool do do it under OS X but it ain’t gonna happen unless you buy another drive. Though I’m not keen on PC’s, I use XP with Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro for DVD’s & also to play games as Direct X is way in front of Open GL in terms of being an games/3d API.
Tom Kroo // July 28, 2006 at 1:41 am
There has been speculation that one can use Boot Camp to load up Windows XP and then use region-free software like AnyDVD or Region Free DVD on top of that to get through the protection.
While this works with other drives, I can confirm that I have tried it on my brand-new Macbook Pro (i.e. Matshita UJ857) and it DOES NOT WORK. The error is similar to that of the VLC media player (I also tried using the Windows version, with the same failure). The title screen comes up, but then the video stalls and/or plays completely corrupted. The sound comes on intermittently, and there is no video.
My guess is that, as another user suggested, the drive does a “double-check” as it is playing the dvd, and this checking prevents the region-free software from functioning appropriately.
My solution: a $50 external DVD player (running my local Japanese region 2 DVDs). And the joy of not having to boot up Windows.
pizzamousechips // August 1, 2006 at 6:21 pm
To Keith:
IIRC, to change the region of your drive all you have to do is insert a DVD of the desired region. It will then ask you if you want to switch. I came to this page because I have the same problem as everyone else, but since it gives me 4 total tries at region switching, I figured I’d just use it now to watch my precious new DVD. Hopefully by try number 4, I’ll have a good, free solution.
Bigcoolguy // August 2, 2006 at 9:37 am
hi,
this is my big problem. When ig ot my Macbook, i searched and searched to find the right software that plays dvd’s of all regions, and then i foud VLC… after 2 weeks of using VLC, in some strange twisted nature, as i have DVD’S of all regions, my DVD player locked on to region 3, and now i can’t play any thing, not even with freeeking VLC,
i think tom’s idea is best, just buy an external DVD drive…
Erik // August 8, 2006 at 2:08 am
how do i copy a dvd(ex:Ice age) into my macbook? im new with computers, can someone help
Tom // August 14, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Erik,
Just download Handbrake (a free application-google it) and you can rip dvds to good quality AVIs. It takes about 30 mins on my Macbook Pro. ‘Mac the ripper’ also works.
As for the general topic of this forum, I had no idea when I bought my Macbook that the drive was region locked and only found out to my horror when I inserted a region 1 dvd a few weeks ago. It’s pathetic that users (who buy the products!) have to put up with such pointless corporate regulation. ANYONE who wants to get pirated dvds, software or music, can. FACT. Why don’t they make it easy for us to use technology the way we want to? Maybe then I would pay for it…
In the UK it is totally legal to buy any region dvd online so why they would want to lock us out is beyond me. Hopefully some bright spark will find a software solution soon as I am not going to flash my drive’s firmware-too risky.
Having found VLC and then Handbrake I was hopeful that Miyamoto’s technique would work. Unfortunately not. VLC won’t play the disc at all, no error message, nothing. Handbrake just says ‘No valid title found’. I guess it is disc specific, some work, some don’t. dependin on age, region etc.
Having said that VLC and Handbrake are both great programs. It’s incredibly refreshing to find free software that allows you access to a good range of video and audio codecs and have full control over the specifics of ripping/encoding/playing/streaming. Anyone who’s experienced problems with avis in quicktime and media player or frustration at the restrictions of ipods/itunes will understand.
I’m (allegedly!) going the way of renting and ripping for the time being until a solution appears…
John // August 14, 2006 at 3:03 pm
I found a sure-fire solution to the problem with limited Region Code selections on PowerBook G4s. It may not be the best solution for your needs, but it works for me.
Briefly, if the DVD I want to watch has a Region Code embedded in it that is not compatible with the code setting of my MATSHITADVD-R UJ-825 drive, I simply make a Region Code-free copy of it first on my Windoze laptop. It’s a pain, I know, but the process gives me a ‘back-up’ that has no Region Code that plays nicely on my PowerBook G4 using DVD Player.
On the Windoze side, I use 1Click DVD Copy software, a bulletproof $59 program that hasn’t never failed to work. After paying for and downloading the program to a Windoze box, users need to download a small freeware patch from a third party on the ‘net to “enable” 1Click DVD Copy to duplicate and strip out the Region Code of copy-protected DVDs. (This is a one-time process.)
See: http://www.1clickdvdcopy.com/
I’m not condoning the creation of pirated DVDs, but until the movie industry and Apple remove this silly restriction on DVD Region Code changes to internal DVD drives on PowerBooks, I will use my solution with a clear conscience.
Geir Helgi Birgisson // August 18, 2006 at 12:13 am
hello.. I’ve got a 17″ PB and I’ve had the same problem for a long time, I hate it!
I was just wondering, has anyone tried external Firewire DVD drives?
Zippy // August 18, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Hi:
I am not very knowledgeable about computers. I want to download the new version of VLC for the Macbook Pro but when I go to the site it gives me a variety of options of versions to download. Can anyone tell me if I am supposed to download the version for ‘Power PCs’, ‘Intel’ or Firefox/Mozilla/Safari? I assume it is the one for intel.
Tom // August 20, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Very, very disappointing news. I just tried the first DVD on my new MacBook Pro, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought this problem was fixed 5 years or so ago? Haven’t seen a region-locked DVD drive for a looong time.
I’ve sent a letter to Apple but I’m not sure if they’ll listen. The fact that they’ve included a region-locked drive at all in a newly designer machine is a good sign that someone is pulling their strings here.
Maybe they play nice so they can add movies to the iTunes shop soon. Whatever.
Monster // August 21, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Im so p+*#@d….same prob as everyone else…live in a diff country and want to watch american dvds….theres got to be some way to fukk these cheeky ba$tard$ over and watch the movies we’ve already fkkn bought w/o jumping thru 2 hours of hoops…im down to my last try before it sticks with me with whatever region im on…i think im gonna go down to the apple store and break something they have on display…that or pick a fight with one of the mac geniuses…i hate windows for all the pain it caused but miss it frequently for the freedom it gave me….
kev // August 22, 2006 at 1:23 pm
i’m going to be purchasing an intel powermac but not until leopard is released, whenever that may be. I was aiming around sometime after x-mas.
i own literally over 100 imports (non region 0/1) discs and i am currently using my ibm laptop to view these dvds. I want a mac but if i’m not able to watch imports then i may possibly avoid buying a mac. sad but true.
also, someone should go more in depth about the “external dvd drive” theory. i don’t mind shelling out $50 for a dvd drive. Are they specific brands I should avoid or what?
thnx
Christina // August 23, 2006 at 10:12 pm
Hello everyone. I run region one in XP media player (bought the DVD part online) and region 2 in Mac X in my intel MacPro
quertovich // August 28, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Christina - that sounds like a great solution. I wonder how it works if, as posted earlier, the firmware of the drive itself seems to be double-checking the region compatibility?
Has anyone out there replicated these results?
Kevin // August 30, 2006 at 10:35 am
I tried a workaround on an off chance it worked. Go into system prefs. and set your DVD drive to igonre when DVD is inserted, therefore stopping Apple DVD player opening when the disc is inserted (default setting) then inserted my R1 disc in the drive (my drive is set to R2). I then opened MacTheRipper, it scanned the disc without giving me any nonsence message about changing the region code of my drive, set the region code to all and it extracted the DVD. As far as I’m aware this hasn’t changed my drive region setting as there was no warning message or any window asking me if I wanted to change my drive setting. Anybody else had any luck with this? I have tried this on my Powermac G4 but not on my Macbook Pro yet, I can only assume that as it works on my G4 that this should work on my MacBook as I haven’t altered the firmware.
mac expert // September 17, 2006 at 3:32 am
not sure what all the fuss is about.
mac expert // September 17, 2006 at 3:36 am
ive been watching mult region dvd’s on my new intel black macbook since i got it. been using vlc like i did with my g4. I just disable the dvd player from system pref like mentioned earlierer. i have a bunch of region 3 and 4 discs as well as american region 1. don’t know if this prob every has is related to “macbook pro” or not. But i am having a happy time with the latest VLC never one problem opening any disc. EVER!!! Maybe its because i never use apple dvd player except rarely for region 1’s. don’t know.
MacDiggity // September 18, 2006 at 2:47 am
Meh…this is not working for me. I get no note about region conflicts or anything, but VLC just seems to scan the DVD and then do nothing.
Donna! // September 27, 2006 at 2:45 pm
I have the same problem. My MacBook is region 1, but I am studying in the UK. I didn’t even know DVD’s had different regions. Booo. Still no cute application to download to get around all this?
Billy // October 5, 2006 at 2:25 pm
VLC for Mac worked for me on a MacBook on both Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs without any fuss. No ripping required.
Lee // October 7, 2006 at 1:03 pm
I can confirm that the latest nightly VLC build on my R2 MacBook Pro will not play the R1 DVD I have in here.
The menu comes up fine, but click on the “Play Now”. window closes, a new window comes up and then VLC is left high and dry
Iggie // October 9, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Has anyone tried “DVD Idle” on a Boot Camp Mac Book Pro? It is a Win XP application that removes region coding in Win XP media Players and not the drive region. I have a copy for my XP SP1 machine but have not installed bootcamp on my Mac Book Pro yet.
One other question was how could Handbrake encode from another region if the drive won’t recognise the region in the first place?
Iggie
sonmani // October 11, 2006 at 12:44 pm
hi,
can i install winxp at apple g4 laptop
Aki // October 27, 2006 at 8:43 am
tried dvdidle doesen´t work for matshita uj-8xx drives, unfortunable
Martin // October 31, 2006 at 2:50 am
As an apple tech, I wanted to point out the reason that some people have no problems is that apple uses a 9:1 drive distribution ratio (approximately, of course), between Matshitas and H-L (Hitachi-LG) drives in MacBook Pro’s. Just wanted to point out for the record though that the only defective DVD drives i’ve ever replaced in the MacBook/Pros have been H-Ls. And I have been doing a lot of replacing (of lots of everything).
Blue // November 5, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Has anyone been having problems with the Matshita drive on their MacBook Pro eating discs? 50% of the discs I put in, whether movies or regular files are trapped by the Matshita drive. It will slowly spool up, then do a minor search and then kick the disc out, or worst yet, eat the disc and then I have to take it to Apple to have them remove the disc. I’ve had to do this 5 times so far and it’s a royal pain. To make matters worst, some discs that previously worked, now don’t while other that didn’t will once in a while work.
A final note, never had any problems on it until I installed boot camp and since then, endless problems.
I’m in Thailand and any solutions would be highly appreciated.
Don // November 6, 2006 at 1:59 am
I did what Kevin suggested back in August. Set System Prefs to ignore me putting in a DVD. Ripped it with MacTheRipper, but got a message at the end about Bad Sectors, and couldn’t watch the movie. I am an American living in Japan, and I would like to copy all my DVDs to region free.
Eero // November 9, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Hello,
like everyone else, i’ve been also wrestling with this problem of Macbook pro (bought around may/2006) not playing different region dvds. I got an external dvd drive (Iomega) from Fry’s electronics. Someone on these discussion forums described “flashing” the drive, which seems not to work on the internal Macbook pro drive, but on this older Iomega drive it seems to work ok. The only problem is that the Iomega drive is not really portable, it needs an AC adapter and it’s not too small (weighs about 3 pounds). It connects via USB and i can copy the movies i want to watch to my hard-drive prior traveling.
wacawaca // November 15, 2006 at 5:11 pm
mmmm the same problem here on november the 15th 2006
have a macbook with matshita uj-857. installed windows xp and dvdidle but the movie just plays all corrupted. at some point it seemed like if it was going to work but neeee.. the same at the end. if anybody finds out about the solution please post it.
:)
azim // November 17, 2006 at 8:14 pm
I am NOT going to upgrade to a “pro” untill a solution is found. I travel regularly between Dallas(r1)/Paris(r2) and need the ability to be region free. I’ll keep my PB G4 for a while longer. Sorry Steve, I’ll return when you can build a laptop for the “rest of us”. >:0(
TIm // November 20, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Hey Blue replace your dvd drive sounds like its faulty.
Ben // November 21, 2006 at 7:34 am
Easiest way to solve the problem… *don’t* set the DVD region.
Download VLC… play DVD’s through VLC. Worked like a charm for me, everything worked 100% :)
macnewbie // November 22, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Ben:
Is this on a MacBook Pro? If so, what MacBook Pro is it?
JL // November 27, 2006 at 11:01 pm
That’s nonsense, My brand new MBP wouldn’t play any discs at all, either through DVD Player or VLC 0.8.5 until I set the region code on the drive.
JL // November 27, 2006 at 11:02 pm
and now that i have set the code to region 2, i stll can’t play other region discs through VLC.
Vman // November 30, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Seems like some ppl are having no problems disabling iDVD and using VLC to open other region DVDs while most of us are not able to do that. As for me VLC does not work and I have MacBook recently purhased 1 month ago. MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-857:
I’ve heard that the other solution is to use Region X which basically allows you to reset the number of times you are able to change regions before it locks out. So you play different regions DVD then change the values back to 4.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13801
Has anyone tried this?
hkk // December 1, 2006 at 12:31 am
Vman: Read the bold text in the program’s description.
It’s not going to help.
Aussie // December 2, 2006 at 1:39 pm
If I were to totally reformat My iMac And reinstall Tiger OSX would this fix or reset my region code? Cos at the moment its locked on region1 and im bloody in Australia!!!
Dominique // December 5, 2006 at 2:01 am
hI ALL i HAVE THE SAME QUESTION. i DON’T KNOW HOW BUT i BURNED MY LAST CHANGE YESTERDAY ON ZONE 1 AND i AM LIVING IN nEW ZEALAND (ZONE 4) i WAS WONDERING IF RE-INSTALLING IT ALL WOULD FIX IT. aPPARENTLY NOT BECAUSE IT IS A HARDWARE PROBLEM.
Aussie // December 11, 2006 at 11:42 am
so just buy a new super drive?? they only like 100bucks!!! damn
macnewbie // December 12, 2006 at 8:37 am
> so just buy a new super drive?? they only like 100bucks!!! damn
Genius! Why didn’t I think of that!!! Just buy a new DVD drive every time you watch 5 movies… Oh, wait… No
Alexis // December 14, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Damnit dudes !!!! I tried to figure out the problem on my own for months but it seems useless… I don’t get the point of Region X ? Why would you download a software that can change your region code when you use a “Region-Free Driver”. C’mon Einstein, it’s f**** useless !!!!
There must be a way to crack this s*** !! I’m in france and over half of my DVD’s are from Canada !!!
I love my mac, I do, but sometimes I just want to burn it down …
Aussie // December 18, 2006 at 2:46 am
>>Genius! Why didn’t I think of that!!! Just buy a new DVD drive every time you watch 5 movies… Oh, wait… No
Well My friend if you payed attention to what I said earlier you would notice that i’m only interested in watching region 4, so thanks for your smart arsed comment. Go fuck yourself. :-)
MacPissed // December 18, 2006 at 10:51 pm
As is if problems with regions wasn´t enough
N. My Macbook Pro won´t play dvds with scratches (it´s only 6 months old). Pretty anoying, when my girl friends HP plays just about everything. I hate that UJ-857-drive.
Anybody who have experienced similar problems with that drive?
New DVD Type in Core Duo 2? // December 19, 2006 at 9:11 pm
I was running through the ATI-AMD Vista test using XP (okay okay, dont kill me, I just wanted to see how it ran…) on my MacBook Pro Duo Core 2, and I am pretty sure it actually said it was a Hitatchi DVD player.
So maybe some light in the end of the tunnel for me.
Will keep you guys posted.
minkll // December 21, 2006 at 3:31 am
Apprently, it’s a Quicktime thing:
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=25586&highlight=region++region
Bert // December 24, 2006 at 11:07 am
Hi,
Just found out on my old eMac. i changed the drive in it for a Samsung drive which can handle +DVD to write. However, Region X, which was installed and did worked fine, worked not on this drive.
After reading this whole lot, I found the latest VLC player. (8.6)
After installing and set the preferences to -none-, I did not get the annoying thing about region code anymore. (I did not use any of the 5 settings yet)
Seems this VLC release does the trick fine.
Mike // January 5, 2007 at 12:45 am
You can tell your brand by running system profiler and checking it. It’s really simple and most are Matsushita. Boo Matsushita. They make it just as hard to make a Home Theater DVD player region free, as well as Denon (whom they own)…
NewAtMacs // January 7, 2007 at 1:25 am
I just got my first mac ever, and I want to know how to take an American (R1?) DVD I own and just put it on my computer so that I can watch it without carrying around the DVD. How do I do this?? Should I go get MacTheRipper? Thanks so so so much!!!!!
NewAtMacs // January 7, 2007 at 1:37 am
Or does Handbrake work better? thanks!
Avi Flax // January 7, 2007 at 3:06 am
New: if it’s a new Mac, which uses an Intel chip (CPU), then MacTheRipper won’t work for you. I recommend HandBrake, it’s fantastic software. Good luck!
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhg!!! // January 7, 2007 at 3:27 pm
ug….its not fair….
vlc - no
mplayer - no
Realplayer- no
:(
Jim // January 8, 2007 at 4:58 am
Avi — MacTheRipper works fine on Intel Macs (at least, it does on my MBPro and Mini). But HandBrake is probably the better choice anyway.
Don // January 12, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Maybe my dvds aren’t copy protected or something, but i have region one and three and can play both of them in vlc with no problems. I have the dvd player set not to open but aside from that, i didn’t do anything. I also can use handbrake to rip anything i have tried. I have the first gen macbook bro with the Matsushita drive. sorry to everyone else though? On another note, my drive often does wierd things and sometimes takes a long time to read the dvd and also messes up burns a lot. So it looks like a terrible drive no matter what
azim // January 16, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Bonjour Y’all
Some guy may have found a way around the region lock for the new Macbooks.
here is the link : http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=40681
It does require some thinkering
Best wishes for 2007
Solan // January 19, 2007 at 10:24 am
Changing the DVD player is a bit drastic, azim.
BTW: I ran System Profiler, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out whether I had a Matsushita or the other one. Where do I look?
Jajaja // January 24, 2007 at 1:20 am
BTW: I ran System Profiler, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out whether I had a Matsushita or the other one. Where do I look?
chek this program DVD Info X.
I hate the matSHITa drive! Now I’m stuck in Region 1 forever.
YOHAN // January 26, 2007 at 4:01 am
Yes. I use windows on my mac with Bootcamp. And I also use DVDidle Pro. And it works like a charm. I use PowerDVD and VLC player. All work on any region because of DVDidle. But I have no idea what to use for mac osx.
robus // January 30, 2007 at 8:38 am
@ azim
you can actually get an old flashable dvd drive, flash it and put it in an external firewire case - that’s a fairly cheap solution that does not imply opening up the MBP (and void the warranty)
That’s just what I may do. I have the infamous Matshita 85J on my MBP, have tried all the software I can think of (even Windows VLC with Crossover ;) ), but no luck yet…
I am hesitant about trying Windows VLC with BootCamp because of the horror stories. I may just get + flash a cheap portable dvd player.
Bottom line, shame on Apple for forcing this kind of stuff on those who shell out almost 3000 bucks for their products. And on any other person who buys a Mac nowadays.
It makes you think twice about buying a Mac again…
robus // January 30, 2007 at 8:40 am
@ Yohan
what Mac and what DVD do you have
MacPissed // February 1, 2007 at 6:05 pm
I have an macbook pro with mishati UJ-857 dvd drive, and no software will make it bypass the region settings. I´m gonna make a last try with Handbrake, though.
However, the drive also seems to have problems reading slightly scratched discs. Apple Service Center looked at it, and claimed it was totally normal, and that they wouldn´t change the drive. (Bad argument, but they can´t change 4 millions drives)
However, that seems crazy, since I use it for video editing. My girl friends hp laptop, which is even smaller than mine, plays all dvds, all regions, no matter how scratched they might be.
Anybody got problems with scratched dvds as well? Or maybe my loocal Apple Service Center are telling me lies?
Doing Just Fine // February 6, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Don’t know how many of you this will help, but I found a solution, at least for myself. I just bought my 15″ macbook pro in January (Matshita 857d KCV9), for a three month work trip to japan. The first time I tried putting a DVD in it was today. It was a DVR of some Japanese television. When the “Please choose a region” message popped up I got a little concerned, and went to teh internet for help. After about two hours of searching through threads I saw that someone had used VLC when the message to choose a region was up, so I tried it and it worked. So now, to play a disc, I insert it, start DVD player, wait for the message, then start VLC. VLC then recognizes the drive and plays the disc for me. When I am done, I close VLC, hit cancel on the “Please choose a region message” and go about my business. So as far as I know (which admittedly isn’t that far) I have a region free player.
I suppose a caveat is I have no idea what will happen if I want to burn a dvd.
matshita857gotohell // February 6, 2007 at 8:43 pm
I just can repeat what so many people said, hoping APPLE thinks twice about doing this b***s*** again!
I have a MacBook and tried everything that was suggested here. For some reasons it seems the japanese are more lucky, but nothing worked for me.
I travel quite a bit between Europe and the US and honestly buy DVD’s and it’s very hard to believe that this is true. In the beginning even one of the “genius”-guys in the apple store in SF didn’t want to believe me…
AAAAAARRRGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hate this drive and Apple for doing this!!!!!
nate // February 7, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I have a powerbook G4 that is set to region 5 (it was initially set to region 1, but I changed it).
I cannot play any DVD from any region now using VLC.
The title of the DVD appears in the controller, seems like it might play for about 1/2 a second and then stops.
I don’t understand this, and I haven’t found anything after hours of searching.
Does anyone know what’s going on?
Kas // February 9, 2007 at 12:44 am
I use a macbook pro and a desktop XP PC. On my PC it took me all of 2 minutes to sort out the problem with a free, tiny program. I wish I could renounce Apple, and all her works and all her pomps, unfortunately I need to work on the laptop.
umijin // February 13, 2007 at 6:51 pm
I’m using a G5 iMac (bought in Japan just before they went Intel) and found that Handbrake (and MediaFork) would not work or recognize the disk, while MacTheRipper does. At least so far it does. We’ll see if it crashes.
Kamal // February 14, 2007 at 6:01 am
Hiya,
I have same problem as you guys have… dont know how it would help just to add another post.
I have a MBP (intel core dua) bought 3 months ago with H-L DVD drive.
In the begining I had set my code to Region2 cos that is what I was going to use and now Iam in India with dvd’s coming from all regions (thanks to globalisation).
The DVD player asks me to change the region and I have 4 times left but dont want to let it go.
I have downloaded VLC to escape the region limitation. I have set my DVD/CD preference to ‘ignore’ as mentioned by so many earlier. But my DVD from other regions wont play. cdda: no audio tracks found
Here is the error it shows on VLC
(main: no suitable access module for `dvdnav:///dev/rdisk1′)
Anyone here who knows what all this means on VLC?
Thanks a lot.
Cheers!
I dont want to go the ripping way it takes so much time. I just want to put my disks in and watch the films and enjoy.
Kamal // February 14, 2007 at 6:03 am
sorry the VLC error is like this (cdda: no audio tracks found
main: no suitable access module for `dvdnav:///dev/rdisk1′) and there is some human error above.
Cheers.
Antonio Aliberti // February 14, 2007 at 7:31 am
i have been living in sf for 8 months and i was in italy and i changed the region code 5 times. now i am in usa and i can not watch dvds, please what can i do?
Pope // February 14, 2007 at 2:25 pm
– VLC media player MacOS X Intel nightly builds –
What is the difference between “Branch” and “Trunk”?
Dont want to go through installing both.
THX
MacWhatTheF&*$@£? // March 30, 2007 at 1:38 am
oh my god!!!!
I got my Macbookpro a month ago and just staretd researching how to go region free… what a nightmare
I read all the posts i could find and I dont think there is one solution.
Too many different variables. Different computers, different drives, even different drive versions (857 / 857d /857j)
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE AT APPLE ????
I guess all we can do is try and try and try different workarounds until we get some kind of satisfaction (or desperation :p )
Steve listen to us… it is a globalised world we live in… you’re going against it and anyone who has in the past done so, lives to regret it.
Cheers everybody
JR // April 1, 2007 at 9:20 am
OK, I’ve read a good few dozen pages on this now and think I’ve got the hang of the issues. So the summary (for people who haven’t been paying attention) is this:
1. If you have a G4 or early Intel machine then you can *probably* play DVDs from all regions in VLC by ignoring the prompt to change the region. You would need to have a drive manufacturer by someone other than Matshita or with a Matshita model number lower than 84x [I *think*, it seems the 83x models work with this method]. If you click ‘Cancel’ the disc will be ejected, so just move the dialogue to the side of the screen and ignore. Click ‘Cancel’ when you’re done watching the film. If you are looking to back-up your DVD then the same method should apply.
2. Some really old G4s (my slowly-dying 667MHz machine for instance) can be patched using XVI’s firmware. XVI has now retired so don’t expect firmware patches for any newer machines any time soon.
3. How many times do we have to say it: RegionX only works if you already have a firmware-patches DVD drive. So unless you’ve done ‘2′, there’s no point suggesting RegionX as a workaround. The way RegionX is works is this: on my old TiBook I used RegionX to switch the drive region before inserting the disk, that way I could play DVDs back in Apple’s DVD player rather than VLC with the region change dialogue.
4. The latest round of Matshita drives (for instance, my 857D) will not allow you to work around the region-coding issue using method ‘1′ or ‘2′. The drives use hardware region coding as well as software region coding and compare the two settings. Unless they match you get garbage out. Handbrake will not work. MacTheRipper will not work. Those applications circumvent the CSS encryption scheme, not the hardware region coding.
5. Some people have suggested booting in to XP as a workaround and using DVDIdle or PowerDVD. My guess is that this only works with the older intel machines with model numbers lower than 84x, since the hardware key will still be set for the 857D. It certainly won’t work from within Parallels since Parallels is still working with the hardware as set up in the Mac OS. The only way that this could work is if Macs and PCs somehow wrote *differently* into the hardware region coding. Which seems unlikely at best.
6. So the *only* solution at this time for people with 857Ds is to go and buy an external DVD drive. If you have discs from only two regions then it doesn’t much matter what external reader you buy since you’ll play all your region x discs in one drive and all your region y discs in the other. If you have discs from more than two regions then assuming you don’t want to buy three or four drives you should do your research and find a drive that is firmware upgradeable.
7. The 17″ Core 2 Duo intel laptops can be ‘upgraded’ in a warranty-voiding way to use a Pioneer drive that works with the method outlined in 1 (i.e. you remove the Matshita drive and replace it). The link to the instructions looks worth following.
8. The 15″ Core 2 Duo intel laptops use a 9mm drive casing that is 3mm thinner than previous laptop DVD drives and Matshita is currently the only manufacturer of drives with this thickness. Until someone else releases a flashable drive with that profile we are stuffed on endless region-switching. End of story.
I find this profoundly irritating since I travel frequently between the US and the UK and have actually *lived* in both countries and so have extensive DVD collections in both regions. Since I spend most of my time in the UK I’ve had to settle on Region2 and an external Region1 (a LaCie light scribe). It’s even more annoying since I can walk down the street and buy a region free DVD player in most A/V shops. My ugly-as-sin PC is also not too fussed about regions. Only on my freaking expensive Pro is there an issue.
I certainly hope that Apple will take pity on us and work with Matshita to issue a firmware update down the line — Steve made his no-DRM pitch not too long ago and this is even more trivial than that! However, I’m not holding my breath.
morten // April 3, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Dear all of you.
It’s inhuman that I just can’t play ” CANE TOADS ” on my MBP duo which is uni-regional despite its high price ! - Most DVDs only exists for region 1
Reminds me of the sayings :
” american beer is like having sex in a canoe - it’s
fucking close to water ”
and :
” I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a
frontal lobotomy ”
and :
” I’d rather have a un-regionalized Mac that can
play any DVD than this one ! ”
I’m sad - I’m depressed - I’m blue - I’m down -
I’m frustrated - I’m P.d of - I’m close to mad/bad - -
SHAME ON YOU APPLE
the original Mackintosh ( Charles Rennie : 1868 - 1928 ) was a highly innovative guy who tought the world about the highest functionalism - but THIS is dream-less & incompetent !
May GOD be with all you other folks
kalfadellis // April 4, 2007 at 9:15 am
the region locking code was just another reason for a lot of people to go and buy pirated DVD. they are cheaper, almost the same quality and sound and most of all, they are region free DVD
GO BUY PIRATED DVD FELLAS! DUN BUY THE ORIGINAL ONE, COZ IT’S SUCKS - YOU PAY TOP DOLLAR FOR NOTHING
udit // April 7, 2007 at 12:24 am
if i have an dvd drive which says its a HL-DT-ST DVDRW GWA4080MA: then is it possible to find a way to watch all regions on my macbookpro?
Steve jobs is kinds shady in some ways, even on the apple tv i can’t watch a lot of other format files on my tv, mainly designed so you buy more from itunes.. lame
Eolake // April 7, 2007 at 7:39 am
I’m as irritated as anybody, but don’t blame Steve. Apple is the one company which will not build in restrictions unless they are forced.
mehum // April 8, 2007 at 10:59 am
@eolake: nobody is forcing them to use matshita drives
nz cry // April 9, 2007 at 7:39 am
Thanks JR for suming it all up for me. My lap top has an 857 BAD APPLE in it
confused // April 11, 2007 at 4:25 am
I don’t understand why people are getting mad at Apple, it isn’t them who made the regions on the DVD’s. It’s the people who make the DVDs
hadronfly // April 14, 2007 at 4:14 pm
hahaha
how naive
apple LOVES drm and copy protection and region locked dvd’s. They \ make money out of that, through deals and agreements with media companies. That’s how idealistic they are. Period.
Wally Robertson // April 14, 2007 at 4:54 pm
No problem encountered. My MBP 17″ is USA bought. I have no region problem using VLC v0.8.4. To be more explicit:
Inserted Region 2 DVD. Apple DVD player repoprted region change needed.
Cancelled message, closed Apple DVD player.
Opened VLC, did File/Open/DVD, selected DVD drive.
DVD started up immediately with no grief at all.
Andrew // April 23, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Wally, having done some extensive reading on the topic, it would be good to know whether you drive is in fact a Matshita UJ-857A or 857D or an LG GWA4080MA or GWA4080MB. Try “About this Mac” & “More info…” from the Apple menu. I suspect your drive is one of the latter two, in which case you are lucky. It appears that the Matshita is currently unbreakable - even when running as a PC - the reason apparently being as follows (see link for original posting):
“Matshita drives won’t return encrypted disc content unless a key for the disc has been requested successfully. To request the key, the computer has to ask for it in combination with the region code. For the key to be returned, the region code requested has to match the region code of both the disc and the drive.”
If you take a look at the DVDIdle website (a company offering software that can make any DVD player region-free, for PCs) you will see in their small print that they can’t and don’t plan to break the Matshita XX-8xxx drives, so it is pretty clear that all of us who have bought Apple Macs with these drives are out of luck. I suggest that we all write to Steve Jobs and as many other influential people as we can to complain about this. “Region” restrictions are anti-competitive and downright criminal (and definitely un-American!). I am actually from the UK and have lived in the US and Hong Kong and as a result have DVDs with different regions. Why should I not be allowed to play DVDs that I have bought quite legally! Gripe, gripe, grumble… I think you get my point… Apart from the very ingenious method demonstrated by macnewbie, the only reasonable work-around appears to be to buy a region-free external DVD drive.
Apparently, if you are stuck at the end of the process of changing region 5 times there is the possibility of doing a “vendor reset”, but you can only do this sort of reset a limited number of times.
PS I wrote this before reading through all of the comments, so I find that I am actually repeating things that have been said before, but maybe mine can act as a bit of a summary.
PPS Since it is becoming a summary, then for completeness’ sake I should mention that for Matshita UJ-857A or 857D drives the following will not work according to all that I have read: VLC (under any method of inserting the disc) or other software, and if you have a 15″ MBP, there is at present no installable replacement for the drive … :-(
Rhett // April 24, 2007 at 10:27 am
It felt good reading posts written by people from around the world. I live and work throughout the Asia-Pacific region and there are four regions in this region alone, Australia, South East Asia, China and Japan, ROFL. I just bought a bran-spanking new 15″ Macbook Pro, it’s my first Apple and although I love using it the hardware/software region tech has spoiled the ride considerably. I’ve been through the stages of denial, anger, bargaining (negotiatng a soloution), and now acceptance. When all I really wanted to do was sit down with this superb piece of engineering and enjoy a DVD.
Perhaps the people at Matshita -mumified inside the vacum of their white coveralls and trapped by their tiny technologies- can no longer leave the atmosphere of their irridescent clean rooms where their product is manufactured and are tunneling their way toward the centre of the earth claiming un-restricted regional territories along their way.
Rumors of Steve Jobs having shrunk himself into a minature world confirm his positioning of Apple as a sound internationaly-versatile brand, perfect for a globalised lifestyle, actualy refers to a novelty globe the kind sold at stationary stores and kept in the home office. He aplogises to those who thought otherwise and invites us all to join him on this new, smaller version of “Earth” and suggests we bring along both Beta and VHS - his collections of tapes is a little ‘undecided’.
Media formats across the industry will undergo a complete overhaul in the coming months said to introduce a new system of copy protection. Salable units such as songs from online vendors will be allocated individual e-regional codes. Under the new restrictions media players will be permitted a single e-region, in some cases limiting playback devices like computers, and MP3’s to a single song.
For those with more serious intentions than this can satisfy I’d like to refer you to JR and Andrew’s posts that as of my writing this summarise the previous 110 articles.
Region info from http://hometheater.about.com/cs/dvdlaserdisc/a/aaregioncodesa.htm
REGION 1 — USA, Canada
REGION 2 — Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 — S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 — Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 — Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6 — China
REGION 7 — Reserved for Unspecified Special Use
REGION 8 — Resevered for Cruise Ships, Airlines, etc…
REGION 0 or REGION ALL — Discs are uncoded and can be played Worldwide
bla // April 28, 2007 at 5:42 pm
guys, why don’t you just make an image of your dvd with the disk utility (dvd master, no encryption), rename it to xxx.iso and then play it with VLC?
Ricardo // May 3, 2007 at 1:03 pm
My god… I’ve spent almost all morning reading these posts, as I’ve first came across the issue today. That’s really sad, no other word for it. I don’t travel a lot, so you guys must suffer much more than me. I live in Brazil and we’re region 4 here.
I guess blaming apple and steve job ain’t gonna help. Sitting and waiting maybe do the trick, but as the other dude’ve said, do not hold your breath.
I don’t agree with the “go pirate” solution, but I have to agree that this is the only way to fuck up this stupid industry. Look at all the fuss and hassle we’re supposed to get through in order to use something we’ve paid a lotta money for. Buy an external DVD? Replace the original one and flash it and THEN use another program…? C’mon, that could be done by most of you, I’m sure, but I doubt that the simple user would ever consider opening a MBP and replacing any kind of hardware.
To me it’s plain simple, someone has got to pay the price for piracy. WE ARE. We buy our moviel legally, we pay the great hollywood studios, government, taxes and this is what we get: THIS FUCKING THING DOESN’T WORK FOR YOU. I bullshit you not when I say it’s working for SOMEONE, and this guy/government/enterprise earn their dollars out of YOUR situation.
I guess this is a pretty stupid strategy, since we can download dvd quality movies using torrent engines, P2P or just going to that certain spots in the city and get a pirate copy.
Considering everything, I feel the best choice is just going pirate for those titles that differ from the settings on your Mac. I won’t even trouble myself changing the region. Just leave it there if everything goes bad, if you move out of your country or anything.
So, there you have it. Go pirate and FUCK the industry.
Lina // May 14, 2007 at 5:08 am
That’s it. The solution for my MBP:
Download EVERYTHING!
So much for anti-piracy with the stupid regions… I have about 200-250 DVDs (all 100% originals), most of them region 1 and 2 because I’m from Europe, but I go to school in North-Am. I also have a few other DVDs from another region that I bought when I went away on holiday.
Then again, it’s not Apple’s fault, but the retarded movie industry who can’t keep up with globalization nor technological advances.
Anyone know a good place for a freshman pirate to start out downloading and purchasing real discs?
Defra // May 15, 2007 at 1:05 pm
I have a brand new MBP 15” with a GWA4080MA drive. Same problems with DVD regions like everybodyelse. Just wondering, what about the software “Region X”??? Does it break the code?
violincredible // May 16, 2007 at 8:16 am
I have been a tragic Mac evangelist right through from the Mac Plus to the current sexy gear, enduring the dark days when Steve Jobs was sent to purgatory, and I even forgave them for my disastrous powerbook 5300cs (TWO dead motherboards, they never released the promised CD drive, the screen bevel cracked, appalling battery life…. -well at least mine didn’t EXPLODE!).
Up until the Intel iMac and MacBook I’ve had no problem getting around these sort of stupid restrictions (3rd party internal drive, firmware flash, PatchBurn etc) but this _really_ matSHITaS me. I strongly believe I have a moral and legal right to enjoy my legally bought DVDs in my legally bought DVD drive. The stupidity and irony of forcing honest people like me to engage in piracy to enjoy content they ALREADY OWN A LEGITMATE COPY OF is breathtaking, and surely dramatically increases not only the market for stolen content, but also a general contempt for the whole sordid, oligarchical industry.
More importantly (to me) Apple’s image and reputation are pungently soiled by this unnecessary toadying to the bullies. I mean, Jobs and Woz honed their craft by hacking, cracking, phreaking etc and to this day their OS and most Apple apps are quietly left open for us battlers to cut our teeth on. Even iTunes Store’s supposed ‘restrictions’ are easily avoidable by the simple process of burning the tracks to a CD and re-importing them.
I’m not endorsing wholesale theft here, but it’s always seemed like Apple have left room for intelligent consumers and aspiring developers/innovators to see inside the ‘magic box’ technology and to take responsibility for their own moral choices.
WTF Apple, get rid of these piece-of-matSHITa drives before us true believers lose all faith in you.
Joe // May 17, 2007 at 10:53 pm
OK…so how funny is this… I have a US MacBook Pro 15″ (purchased in November ‘06), and I happen to be in Germany at the moment. I got a DVD for which there is no English version (the German film Vaya Con Dios), and popped it into my MacBook only to find out there’s no region crack for the matsushita drive (oh, joy!) DVD Player said “You need to change your region. You can only do this 4 more times” and I thought “eh, fine, F U too, but whatever” and did it. I also ripped the disc while I had it in after watching the movie (I *am* still allowed to back up my media, right!?) Upon mounting the .cdr image made with OS X’s Disk Utility, DVD Player tells me “You need to change your region. You can only do this *5* more times” — What in the world!? First of all, I set the region when I played the disc, so my system is already set to the region of the disc image. Second, how did the number of times I’m allowed to change my encoding go up!?
As a side note, VLC does play the ripped image, but I haven’t tried ripping anything with my drive set to a different region than the disc. I figure if I have the disc image, then at some point I’ll find some software that can strip the f*