URGENT! DVD region locked need help! Run film business and have clients waiting.

Hello All.

I'll dive right in as need a hero.

I own one of the new imacs, bought in 2010. Apple care warranty has just expired. I just changed the dvd region to a U.S dvd and now can't change it back.
I never knew about the 5 changes so must have exceeded it.

Is there anyway of undoing this? E.g resetting IMAC to last nights setting, like you can on windows?

Alternitively if i buy an External DVD reader and writer will that be locked?

I need to be able to read and write to dvds as run a small film company.

PLEASE PLEASE HELP AND GET BACK TO ME ASAP!

Kyle

Running a Film business, am i right in presuming you have either a TM backup or a bootable clone from CCC or Superduper ??
If so you could delete the DVD player from your iMac and then replace it with the one in the backup.


HTH

Cheers

The IMAC is used by one of my colleagues and no they have not set up a time machine back up.

Could resetting it to factory settings reset the drive?

Could someone second the opinion an external DVD drive would not be affected? That would give me all the go ahead I need to buy.

Thanks for comments so far.

Kyle

A new external drive also would have 5 times it could be changed before it also becomes region locked. That lock gets written to the firmware of the drive. Same in Windows, Linux, doesn't matter.

Best setup everyone to use VLC when they need to play a DVD from another region instead of changing the region of their physical drive. VLC does not respect region encoding. (Or AnyDVD - not free, but it's the best one out there - if you're running Windows)

We were told years ago that you're suppose to be able to call the manufacturer of the drive and be able to get it reset once. I have never done it though and never actually talked to anyone that has.

Bobtomay.

Am I to uderstand that if I buy an external DVD reader and writer it will not be affected but the region lock?

Just wish to be clear before I order one right now.

Kyle

Bob answered that in his post. The NEW EXTERNAL DVD will have 5 changes. All drives start out with 5 region changes left. It's NOT OSX or the MAC that is causing this. ALL DVD drives are limited to 5 changes of Region.

You get a new External you will have 5 changes available to you. Same on a Windows machine, Linux machine.

That is correct - the region encoding is hardwired into the drive itself - it is not software based.

As dtravis stated, each individual drive can be changed 5 times until it is locked unless you get a region free drive. There are some out there.

It requires flashing the firmware to reset the drive once it has reached those 5 changes to start over again. Getting your hands on the firmware can be tough. There is open source firmware available for some drives, but I have never used any of them, preferring to use software such as VLC instead of touching the firmware of my drives.

Thank you for all your help guys.

Always can depend on getting the right info in this forum!

Kyle

Not a problem. The whole region thing has always driven me nuts anyway! I agree with Bob and use VLC for such DVD's.

Where does one find VLC?

You can download it from here.

Thanks. And what is the difference between the 32 bit and 64 bit items? How do I know which one I want/need? I have OSX 10.6.

bumpity bump

Either should be fine. 10.6 will run the 64-bit version with no issues. For playing DVDs, it really doesn't matter.