Mac Book - locked DVD region

The MacBook is designed around an internal "slot loading" drive. Some of the previous generation iBooks had a "tray loading" drive where a tray popped out and the entire disc was placed in a clamp similar to that of most portable CD players. Both are different than a traditional tray loading mechanism like you'd see in a CD/DVD player or a desktop CD/DVD drive; those require the CD to be centered in the tray mechanism, and when the mechanism pulls in the CD/DVD, the clamp goes down on the disc.

The region coding is enforced in the drive's individual firmware. The drive itself will refuse to play another region unless you give the OK for the operating system software to play another region. There are various debates on how legal region coding is in some countries, but I don't see any government agency ever forcing the manufacturers to stop the practice.

One alternative you might have is to purchase an external DVD drive. It would still be subject to the five region code changes, but now that you know about it you can probably avoid messing with it. It might be a little bit harder because many of the USB DVD drives don't have official support for Mac OSX.

As a temporary "fix" you might try the VLC Media Player application. It's a free, open-source program that you can download from a service like VersionTracker.com. You _may_ find that VLC will work without respect to a DVD's region code.

"I spoke with Mac"

Who is Mac? Regardless, there is at least one method to reset the DVD player VD region counter, and I suggest that you use Google to locate it.

CarolineJ wrote:
Thanks for this, but I have actually bought a small portable dvd player, so I was ideally looking for an internal solution i.e replacing the existing drive and getting back to a region 2 setting.

Sure it could be done. However - it's not going to be as easy as replacing a hard drive but it doesn't seem too hard on the new unibody versions. Looking at the pictures, I would probably be willing to do this myself. This should give you an idea of what would have to be done:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/MacBook-Unibody/589/1

I'm not sure if you could purchase the part directly from an Apple Store. They typically only handle warranty/AppleCare repairs. There are retail service companies that will sell the part and/or perform the installation. iFixit sells that drive for US$200 used, but they don't specify how many region change have been selected. It's usually not a problem for someone using Region 1 discs if the region is already set. I'm not sure what you could get it for.

The reason why I suggested the external drive was because it would probably cost less than trying to get one of these new internal drives.

CarolineJ, what brand of dvd drive do you have in your macbook?

CarolineJ wrote:
I didnt realise I was being tested for gramatical correctness! I spoke with "Apple Macintosh" and they actually suggested the rpc1 forum but after speaking with a few users on there they advised I would probably not find a fix on their site, I have googled but obviously not found the solution you suggest I look up!!

Don't mind that response. He gets a bit cranky when people ask if they might get something simple repaired (when it was the person's own fault) for free as a courtesy or when people refer to "Mac" or "Macintosh" as if it were a company.

Technically you were contacting Apple Inc. or one of its representatives. "Mac" or "Macintosh" is simply an Apple Inc. product line. Imagine you just purchased a Land Rover Discovery and were bringing it for service with "Discovery" rather than "Land Rover". That was the point.

"He gets a bit cranky when people ask if they might get something simple repaired (when it was the person's own fault) for free as a courtesy or when people refer to "Mac" or "Macintosh" as if it were a company."

He's not cranky - I just find it humorous that some users seem to be lost, and prefer to find their way by speaking with the blind. Caroline could have fixed the problem for free, and she chose to replace the optical drive of her computer. I have absolutely no problem with that.

Caroline...

Just to confirm...

+*I didn't really appreciate the issue of only being able to watch this region 5 times before locking the region to 1 permanently which is exactly what I have done.*+

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you meant to say. You can watch any given region as often as you like. The problem is with "changing" regions. You are only permitted to change the region five times before the regions gets locked into the last one used. You will usually be prompted to let you know how many times you'll be able to change it before this happens. Are you saying that you never changed the region and it was locked... or that you did actually changed the region five times? If you didn't actually change the region, it may be an issue with the drive itself which you may be able to address with Apple.

CarolineJ wrote:
Hi Joey,

Thanks for this but sadly It was me! I changed it 5 times, the problem was I was watching UK movie DVD's and alternating those with a friends US box set of Battlestar Galactica (not sure why I needed to explain that!), unfortunately as I was on enough medication to bring a horse down I just didn't realise the implications of the warning (I know!)

I think we mostly understood that you were switching between DVDs from different regions and your were half-knowingly approving the region changes while under medication.

It's such a shame as this laptop was a brand new replacement for my 7 year old ibook and I had only had it a matter of days before I was in hospital. I'm happy to buy a new drive if that's what I have to do but thought I should exhaust every avenue first. Thanks again

Well - region changes are also going to be in the OSX software. At least that should be the case for Apple's own DVD Player software. You might even need something like a complete operating system reinstall.

I did a little search, and there are ways to do reset the region coding to 0 changes, although there are risks such as completely killing the firmware in the drive. I wouldn't recommend doing it yourself. I don't think there's anything necessarily illegal about doing it, but it does have its risks. The drive manufacturers certainly don't want users to "own the keys" to resetting the number of region changes.

One of the things I found out is that if you ask nicely, you might be able to get the drive manufacturer to reset the number of region changes back to 0. They have the software tools to do this but again they don't want end users doing it themselves. You might even consider politely explaining your situation at an Apple Store, which might be able to do this for you (I don't know if they will, but it's worth a try). The main thing I've heard is that a drive manufacturer or Apple is not likely to do this more than once (or twice in rare cases).