HT201705: DVD Player: About DVD-Video regions

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Graytemple

Q: How to play zone 2 dvd on a zone 1 macbook air

I have a year-old MacBook Air running OS 10.11.3. I also have a bunch of European DVDs. I don't want to switch my Mac to zone 2 permanently. Is there a piece of hardware or software that will let me view the European stuff without screwing up my American settings?

MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.2), iPod Classic as well

Posted on Mar 10, 2016 1:11 PM

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Q: How to play zone 2 dvd on a zone 1 macbook air

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  • by pinkstones,Helpful

    pinkstones pinkstones Mar 11, 2016 5:51 AM in response to Graytemple
    Level 5 (4,209 points)
    Safari
    Mar 11, 2016 5:51 AM in response to Graytemple

    The only thing I've been able to find are hacks for the OS and hacks to erase the region coding on the DVDs, and I never advocate anyone do that kind of stuff.  You can never be sure of what will happen to your system afterward.

  • by dialabrain,

    dialabrain dialabrain Mar 10, 2016 2:38 PM in response to Graytemple
    Level 5 (6,197 points)
    Mac App Store
    Mar 10, 2016 2:38 PM in response to Graytemple

    some info from the VideoLAN site…

    This mostly depends on your DVD drive. Testing it is usually the quickest way to find out. The problem is that a lot of newer drives are RPC2 drives these days. Some of these drives don't allow raw access to the drive untill the drive firmware has done a regioncheck. VLC uses libdvdcss and it needs raw access to the DVD drive to crack the encryption key. So with those drives it is impossible to circumvent the region protection. (This goes for all software. You will need to flash your drives firmware, but sometimes there is no alternate firmware available for your drive). On other RPC2 drives that do allow raw access, it might take VLC a long time to crack the key. So just pop the disc in your drive and try it out, while you get a coffee. RPC1 drives should 'always' work regardless of the regioncode.

  • by Meg The Dog,

    Meg The Dog Meg The Dog Mar 10, 2016 3:11 PM in response to Graytemple
    Level 6 (11,138 points)
    Video
    Mar 10, 2016 3:11 PM in response to Graytemple

    You can change the region for your computer up to 5 times.

    Open the app DVD Player, and search Help for "Set your DVD drive region" for instructions - excerpt below:

    Screen Shot 2016-03-10 at 1.10.06 PM.png

     

    MtD

  • by John Lockwood,Solvedanswer

    John Lockwood John Lockwood Mar 11, 2016 2:42 AM in response to Graytemple
    Level 6 (9,309 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Mar 11, 2016 2:42 AM in response to Graytemple

    Since you are using a MacBook Air this means you must also be using an external DVD drive. The simplest and completely legal solution would be to buy a second external DVD drive and have one permanently set to R1, and the other permanently set to R2.

     

    The setting is in the DVD drive not the computer.

  • by Graytemple,

    Graytemple Graytemple Mar 11, 2016 5:53 AM in response to John Lockwood
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 11, 2016 5:53 AM in response to John Lockwood

    Thanks. I think that solves my issue.