Can American Macs play European DVDs?

Most DVDs are assigned a region code that corresponds to a geographic area, to help motion picture studios control the worldwide release of movies. The first time you use DVD Player to play a DVD with a region code, you may be asked to set the DVD drive to match that code; DVD Player plays only discs with the same region code as the DVD drive or discs with no region code. If you insert a DVD that uses a different region code, a dialog appears asking you if you want to change the DVD drive’s region code. You can only do this 5 times. So, you can use it in the states, then cange it when you get home.

Not quite true. If you use the built-in "DVD Player" program to play DVDs, you can only CHANGE region 5 times. So if you only want to play Region 2 DVDs, you'll be fine. If you ever want to play a region 1 (US) disk, you'll be warned that you're using up your changes. (And then warned again when you switch back to a Region 2 disk.)

You can get around this entirely by using VLC to play the disks.

Matt