Why can the dvd region only be changed 5 times?

I bought a dvd when i was in the u.s., and wanted to watch it on my macbook. I'd already changed it 4 times and it said i coud onlu change it once more, so i had to not watch it to avoid getting stuch in r1. Why is there a limit on the number of changes you can make?

Because a Movie executive suit somehow convinced Apple that they need maintain control of distribution of their crap movies so they can squeeze as much "revenue" as they can by releasing to individual markets over time. A region-free DVD player on a Mac is threatening to them, so this stupid deal was made to cripple the DVD player.

Same reason I, as an American in the US, can't get Torchwood Declassified from the BBC UK site.

Media cartels suck. That's why. ;D

It's nothing at all to do with Apple or Macs. Same thing with any DVD drive for the reason that walkerj stated. Greedy people. I have run into this for ages on my Windows systems also.

Is there any way to reset the no. of resets you have to 5 again?

charliecrosslan said:

Is there any way to reset the no. of resets you have to 5 again?

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Not legally, no.

Originally, you were suppose to be able to call the manufacturer of the drive and they could give you a code to reset them to 5 changes again. This was suppose to be able to be done twice I think.

But finding a support tech that knows anything about it, could be a bigger hassle than spending the money for a new drive.

What about a reinstall of the operating system?

Guess I'm safe from that with my Macbook Air

Get two external drives, lock one to region 1 and the other to region 2.

Sucks, yeah.

theGFfriedherMB said:

What about a reinstall of the operating system?

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Has no effect. This does not pertain to the OS. This is a setting in the firmware of the drive.

Figures. Thanks.

theGFfriedherMB said:

What about a reinstall of the operating system?

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dont think so, i recentl reinstalled osx and it still had the same no. of resets left.

You might try using VLC to play your DVDs, instead of the DVD Player application.

technologist said:

You might try using VLC to play your DVDs, instead of the DVD Player application.

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He da man.

Hi. I've been trying to use VLC to play a region 1 DVD (I'm in the UK and my drive is set to region 2). However, it doesn't work. I'm running OS 10.5 and have downloaded the most recent version of VLC but it doesn't let me play the DVD, and if I get rid of the message that pops up to tell me that I must change the region, the DVD ejects from the drive. Help!

The VLC trick doesn't work on any of my machines, I tried it a long time ago and was told that the newer drives were too smart for VLC to be able to trick.

But that's what I read off some strange Mac-related sites (ala macintouch)

dvd

hi

this has been covered a zillion times and the answer is still
- no way. matshita drives especially, cannot be altered.

the best way is to have two macs

regards

Can you flash the drive with RPC-1 (region-free) firmware?

Juan Largo said:

Can you flash the drive with RPC-1 (region-free) firmware?

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Not legally. You wouldn't find any illegal ways of doing so on this forum. If you discuss it, I bet this thread will be closed.

Thanks for your reply. That sucks!

So is there nothing I can do to allow myself to play both region 1 and 2 discs? I have a good number of each so this is rather an inconvenience.

Can you lock the dvd drive to region zero. Ie all regions. I know with a could for my TV based dvd player. But I've not tried it with my imac's drive.