09-06-2008, 04:03 AM

After hearing how fantastic the mac is i was truly disapointed to discover that i cant play DVDs from differnt regions. For people like me who travel and have been travelling for most of my life, i have atleast 2 regions in my DVD collection, would also like to add ALL legal copies. I have tried the Latest Handbrake and Latest VLC on Leopard 10.5.4 on a MacBook 2.1. The DVD drive is a Matshita DVDR UJ-857D. Computer is from Australia (region 4) and i want to Play European (region 2) discs - Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in Advance

09-06-2008, 06:14 AM

Since all you are doing is trying to watch your owned DVDs and not trying anything illegal I have found this answer, hope it helps

Region settings are maintained both by the firmware of the drive and in the DVD Player software. You need to switch the DVD Player software region setting without changing the drives' firmware settings.

To do this, you need to use a program called 'Region X'. This will let you change the DVD Player software region so that it won't prompt you to change the firmware region of the drive.

The way I have it set up is in 'System Preferences', under 'CDs & DVDs', I have 'When you insert a video DVD' set to launch 'Region X'. That way, I can always change DVD Player's region (and reset it's counter) to match the region of the drive and disc I will be viewing.

One little hiccup, though. The developer of 'Region X' has retired. Look for version 1.1.3, it is a universal binary. However, it still has some issues running on Leopard.

Also, with Leopard, Front Row maintains it's own information on regions, so you'll have to watch your Region 2 DVDs with DVD Player, not Front Row. It should still work for your Region 1 DVDs.

I hope that is helpful and understandable.

http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Video/Region-X.shtml

09-06-2008, 09:27 PM

"Region X" will only work when used with a region free DVD player. I don't think the DVD players\burners currently installed in Mac computers are region free.

There are however, several methods available where the firmware can be updated to make the DVD player\burner region free. Note that if you update the firmware with a non Apple approved update it not only voids the warranty for the drive but it also may render it useless.

http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=43082

Regards.