DVD regions must die! It is ridiculous! I’m currently stuck, unable to change my Mac mini from region 1 to region 2, despite the fact that I have one of my five tries left. The fact that I even have this problem is idiotic, considering that I bought my DVD’s and I bought my Mac mini.
Neither are stolen or pirated, so why am I being bothered with this crap?
Anyway, does anyone know how I can break the law and put and end to this mockery?
man, ive got 2 changes left. im on mac mini ppc in region 2. I shell out $$$ for my favourite region 1 snowboard movies. im so angry ‘bout region codes. patching pc drives was easy but I didnt find a solution for this mac mini drive.
id appreciate any solution big time!
I’ve found that the vlc (videolan.org) mediaplayer will play any DVD just fine, regardless of region code.
Yeah, I tried that, but it didn’t work. It can see the DVD, but it doesn’t play it.
VLC seems to ignore region codes on my iMac. Stubborn DVDs, I rip on my old windows laptop using DVD Shrink. Frankly, I think until they fix this deliberate, in-build design defect on DVDs, we the great unwashed have a right to get round it. No matter how many little cute kittens are killed by the DVD makers.
On drives on computers as new as the Mac Mini it may be almost impossible. If the VLC work around doesn’t work, then it is likely that nothing will work. You could try MacTheRipper, but it is likely to tell you it has ‘bad sectors’.
The reason is that the firmware in most drives being shipped in Macs in the last few years has regions built into it, and hasn’t been cracked (and will likely never be cracked, being that the best hope to do so has retired).
I have an old iMac (G3) that isn’t plagued by this, so I rip onto that, and then move the ripped (and region free) file to my main computer (luckily I don’t need to that too often).
Among your options could be to get a cheap old computer that has a DVD drive which is unaffected (you could theoretically even put it in a firewire enclosure and forgo the second computer). Or, you could simply replace the drive with one that doesn’t have the same problems. Or buy a shit load of cables, and one of those eyeTV boxes and input from a regular region free stand alone DVD player.
I know, none of them are that great…
–harry
This is one of the reasons why I am moving to an ‘all electronic’ method.
Even if I eventually roll to a Mac, I will have a PC around with a DVD drive that has the region lock disabled (i.e. rolls to 5, then stops counting) that will let me roll it to HDD based storage.
I’m tired of DRM and such crap – so if it means I have to rip-and-watch purchased material, so be it.
VLC is stubborn on the Mac, there’s an off chance you might be able to find a region-less firmware for your drive, but the last time I looked the firmware updating tools still had to be run under “classic” and firmware lists hadn’t been updated in a long time.
You could always try installing Windows on Parallels and using VLC, or one of the many DVD ripping apps for the PC.
I’m in the same boat. we just moved to canada and bought a local dvd player because of different voltages etc.
we now have a cupboard full of expensive tea coasters…. :(
i’m thinking about trying DVD shrink – but thats pc only and ruins the quality – and kills some features :(
You can always void your warranty and flash the drive’s firmware. There are sites on the internets which holds these region free firmwares.
QUIET POEP!
mediafork its pretty good to rip DVDs
Now with windows xp on paralles i can use any-dvd and its pretty fast. You can even watch a DVD full screen… I have had really no problems, the speed has increased by so much now its great!
Also would like to point out that there is a need for some sort of region free dvd playback software for Mac os x. If it cost 20€ I would by it. There are many utilities for windows, but no company so far has stepped to the challange to produce a OS native client.
Maybe Steve Jobs could hold up partly on his DRM letter and make all Macs DVD drives region free?
That would be a powerful move and a much appreciated one.
Thor, don’t tease me like that! Show me!
And no, I’m not booting into Windows to watch Alien Quadrilogy extras! :)
Chris, you make a good point. If only.
did you try mediafork? just rip them to MP4 and use frontrow? might work or? won’t have to worry about the reagion or the macrovision
and i can’t spell :S
And this is just one more reason why I ditched my Mac Mini. There isn’t a cracked firmware release for the drives that ship with the Intel machines.
It’s something to do with the way the firmware works on those drives: the region stuff isn’t held with the rest of the firmware, and they’re too “clever” to allow you to fix it by cracking the firmware. I believe this is also the reason for VLC’s troubles.
There are two solutions really – 1) buy another slimline drive off ebay and replace it (involves opening up your Mini) or 2) buy a caddy and use a region free drive over firewire.
VLC can’t work with mac for mostly 1 year and +. no hope here.
why ?
because matsushita dvd drives do not read the content if there are not a real negotiation between the OS and the Zone+css , whatever you put in the dvd drive.
if the dvd player do not try to validate the dvd zone and css codes , the drive give “bad” sector to the dvd player.
VLC trying to bypass the dvd negotiation (in order to bypass the zone) only receives “garbages”.
-
you cannot change the firmware in the actuel dvd drives apple sells. they are matsushita one and noone knows how to change the firmware on them. Matsushita did not give the software to modify the firmware.
you can get more technical details here : http://rpc1.org
Harry’s spot on. The newer machines’ drives have what I understand to be a double check. VLC bypasses the initial software check, but a hash gets passed to the drive and the drive does an internal check. Thus without a new firmware (which doesn’t exist) you can’t play different region discs.
I recently sent a slim, Lacie external DVD-ROM drive to a friend so she could watch different region discs. She’s studying in Australia so either a) couldn’t watch her own movies, or b) not watch local movies. Regions are a huge pain. Like most “protections” they just screw over paying customers.
I use an external ide–DVD which sits in a firewire box with an Oxford bridge chip as my main drive. For some strange reason I never had trouble playing DVDs I own (I own both european and import DVDs). Maybe externalizing is the easiest solution to your problem (although it sure isnt as pretty or fast as a software update).
(on the other hand my main argument for the intel switch by apple has been that intel managed to design a very tight useage-control-system (aka. DRM haven), so if it’s a firmaware-driver trying to be overly smart you may be out of luck)
[quote]Of course, there is a much easier and cheaper way to watch multiple regions on your ‘Book, although it doesn’t work with every drive and on occasion has made unwanted region changes to non-region-free (RPC2) drives according to posters on rpc1.org. The solution is use VLC (Video LAN Client) instead of Apple’s DVD player.
To make this work you must go into System Preferences for DVD Movie and either set VLC as the default application or set it to ignore. This will cause OS X to think of the non-Region 1 DVD as a data disk and mount it in the Finder. VLC doesn’t query region code and will just play the movie, though the interface is nowhere near as nice as Apple’s, and there are some stability issues[/quote] – from http://lowendmac.com/fishkin/06/0623.html
This is always something good when you need firmware for optical drives (regardless of OS): http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php
Everyone suggesting VLC, it truly, truly, truly will not work on the new drives, have a read of oomu’s commments.
It is so restrictive that you are even unable to copy the files from the region encoded disc to your computer (it will give errors).
If you have one of these drives, right now there is absolutely no way (and I am not overstating here) that you will play a disc from another region in that drive.
As g and Jacob said, you could get an external HD (Pioneer definitely make ones you can use). The links people have left for rpc1 will be useful in buying one.
But there really is no way AT ALL for the built in Matsushita drive, there are no firmware cracks for them.
Sorry…
Same issues with Regions and VLC here, running an old iBook G4 with a dreaded Matsushita combo-drive.
My solution is to use an LaCie external firewire DVD burner/player, as mentioned in a couple of earlier comments. Works as expected, though not exactly portable.
Hi, i’ve read all your posts, and was thinking… Is it the same issue with the MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-846 that is in my IMAC 20”? I haven’t been able to find any way to make it regionfree…
I hate this whole shit!!!! i change it 5 times and now i’m stuck in europe with a region 1…. i really thought there was a easyer solution (like software or something like that) . I am VERY dissappointed!!!!!
hej,
i use the vlc code free player on a old G5 iMac….wunderful,no problems
I have an early Intel Mini and VLC has never worked for the reasons already mentioned. VLC DOES NOT WORK ON INTEL MINIs!!!
The only solution I found was an external FW drive that you know can be flashed. Base your choice on firmware availabilty rather than outright performance (search forum.rpc1.org). Also, you will likely need a ‘proper’ windows machine you can connect the bare drive to (IDE/SATA direct) for the flashing process.
Once you have done that then you will also need RegionX to control the region setting for software. There are different versions for PPC and Intel and both are, confusingly, versioned as 1.1.2. This stops DVD player from crapping out but Front Row will still complain that the disc region is wrong (I have found)
NO NEED TO CHANGE REGIONS – FREE software for mac….
Insert any region DVD into your mac. Ignore the DVD Player region change message. Open VLC player, go file down to open disc, click ok, and the disc will play perfectly.
VLC player is free, and it ignores regions on all DVDs.
You can get VLC player for mac, pc and other OS’s here:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Enjoy!
[quote comment=“103252”]I’m in the same boat. we just moved to canada and bought a local dvd player because of different voltages etc.
we now have a cupboard full of expensive tea coasters…. :(
i’m thinking about trying DVD shrink – but thats pc only and ruins the quality – and kills some features :([/quote]
Chris, I’m in Canada. I have successfully removed the region problem on my regular DVD player, so it plays UK discs as well as Canadian. I have thousands of codes – they’re $10 each – let me know your DVD player make and model –
ebay link
Or use the VLC player option I mentioned above.
@kev:
I’m sorry but you’re plain wrong.
VLC won’t circumvent the region code issue play on newer Macs – and if you bothered reading the thread you’d also find out why.
VLC will return a whole bunch of errors: no video tracks, no audio tracks, no TOC – all related to the damn region code