Assuming that Boot Camp is not an April Fool's joke I wonder if this means that we will be able to use some of the Windows applications, such as DVD Region Free, to play legally bought Region 1 DVD's on the MacBook Pro!
Has anybody downloaded the Beta and tried this yet?
I for one wil definitely be upgrading to a MacBook Pro if it is possible!
iMac G4 1.25 GHz and PB G4 15 1.5GHz,
Mac OS X (10.4.5)
So far, the only thing that works on my MacBook Pro is Handbrake - it allowed me to rip & encode a region 2 DVD in my American MacBook Pro. I could then watch the resulting .avi file, or .mp4.
That’s a lengthy process (about 1 hr.) to watch a movie…but…at least there’s ONE option for the MacBook Pro with a MATSHITA UJ-857.
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My findings:
FIRST, you MUST disable autoplay for video DVDs in the System Preferences under “CDs & DVDs.” Set it to “Ignore.”
- VLC will play the intros/menus, but then I get a warning that says this DVD player doesn’t match the region code.
- XinePlayer doesn't work on playback of different-region DVDs. I get an "error number 7," with the only option being to "skip movie."
- MacTheRipper will rip, but the ripped file is unwatchable…
- DVDBackUp just crashes before ripping.
- MPlayer simply locks my machine every time.
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The file created with Handbrake will play in VLC (and QuickTime, depending on the audio settings). And…since you can specify file-size, you can make a very high-quality file, near DVD quality.
That’s the best I’ve got so far.
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6) 2.16 Ghz Intel Core Duo
I have now tried it: I booted into Windows on my MBP and tried out a region 1 and a region 2 DVD on Media Player Classic. I didn't get a "wrong region setting" message.
I then booted back into OSX and tried the same DVDs in VLC and DVD Player. Both worked first time and neither asked me to change region. On the face of it, this seems like a good workaround, although I don't know why it works!
However, I don't know if I have just used up 4 of my changes: as there was no warning, I don't know if I have "silently" changed my region without knowing it. Is there a way to check?
However, I don't know if I have just used up 4 of my
changes: as there was no warning, I don't know if I
have "silently" changed my region without knowing it.
Is there a way to check?
Well, there's one easy way to try it out, isn't it? 🙂
I think there are some tools you can use under windows to check if your drive is RPC1 (region free) or RPC2, which can also tell you how many changes you have left. Check the tools section on rpc1.org, and please report back here..
Hi there,
I already replied to this on Saturday morning, but I guess my mesg got lost in the ether...
I did check this out: apparently I now have 4 changes and 4 vendor resets left. When I booted into OSX, DVD.app ran both Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs perfectly well, without asking me to change region.
I only have 1 region 1 Disc, so I can't check this with others discs, but it looks like we may have a way around the DVD lock...
Can someone else try?
Alright, I'm with the original poster on this one...has ANYONE tried to run a Windows program such as DVD Region Free on their Intel Mac and then rebooted in Mac OS to see if the drive was cracked properly and multiple regions play on the drive (with or without DVD Player - VLC works just as well). tonylord, I'm not really sure what you accomplished other than loading a DVD in Windows first and then in Mac. It doesn't seem to me that this is cracking the firmware of the drive which NEEDS to happen for the drive to accept multiple regions. The problem is that there are no longer any region-free hacks to be found anywhere online for Mac drives. SO, we need to go the Windows route on Intel Macs. DOES IT WORK? Has anyone tried to flash their drives in Windows and had success running other regions in Mac OS X?
I have one more question (in addition to those asked above)...are ALL external DVD drives region free? For instance, I have a Lacie D2 back in the States. Is it region free or is it also plagued by region locking?
I have a mac mini. i have MATSHITACD-RW CW-8124. The DVD region is set to 1. I would like to play region 2 dvds. VLC does not work, it keeps crashing. Mplayer doesn't even seem to work with region 1 dvds. and XinePlayer for G3 (using roseta) doesn't work for region 1 either.
So, from all the forums i gather that there is no firmware out there, and i can't replace my drive, nor do i want to buy an external one. so are there any concrete step buy step suggestions?
And why is it that on many forums people are saying the VLC works with any region where by me it doesn't open the movie??
VLC used to work with older DVD drives, in older Macs. The drives used to be region free, with just the DVD Player software setting the region settings. If you used VLC you could make use of the region free drive.
However most drives from about 2 years ago up to now work differently with basically the region code being set in the drive firmware as well. Since there is now open or hacked firmware anymore, there is also no way for VLC or other player or ripping software to get around this.
You know, instead of using VLC or any of this other crap, couldn't you just use DVD Shrink (this being in windows and all) to rip the disc onto your HDD, decrypted and region free? And if you wanted to watch the movie in Mac, would could simply burn yourself a copy (now that it's region free and all). By no means am I advocating this...that would of course be illegal 😉 But it would work.
first of all, even though i am using mac mini (intel) i am not using windows.
second, ripping a dvd takes too long, i just want to see the thing. anyways the only program i know of is called macripper, but it extracts a dvd into like 4gigs...
