Unlocking Regional DVD Restrictions (I travel A LOT)

I looked at unlocking my old iBook's DVD drive a long time ago. The main point is that it involved hacking it,with the risk of stuffing-up the machine altogether. In short, forget that path: unlocking your DVD drive ain't gonna happen. MAYBE, by buying another region-free DVD drive, like the suggestion made above...I know you said you didn't want to spend anymore money - btw, it's not an issue related to Apple, but related to the film industry who are protecting - badly -their copyright. But let's not stray sideways of your question.

MY SOLUTION TO YOU: if you cannot make the DVD drive region-free, why not making your DVDs region-free?
Download freeware MacTheRipper ( http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22715) and extract your movies which are region-locked, and re-burn them on blank DVD, region-free, which is what MacTheRipper allows you to do. Not ideal, but practical solution. Disclaimer: Of course, the program MacTheRipper is not for illegal use, but for backup purposes. Like your case: you want to back up the movie, region-free.

Bon voyage!
A.

Mick has it.

Clearly the problem is with the drive. I fault Apple for choosing this drive over another thus restricting by enjoyment with their product.

I also think Mick is on target when he suggests that if we want the full movie experience, we'll all have to start downloading from iT...

Ant1,

I wish it were that easy. The latest MacBook Pro Core Duo 2's do not allow raw mode access to the drive UNLESS the region code is sent by the OS and matches what the drive setting is.

The drive sends corrupt data when accessed without the region key being exchanged. If I put a Region 1 disc into the drive (it's currently on Region 2) then accessing it with anything other than DVD player (and thereby changing the Region) results in corrupted data being sent.

It's a "feature", apparently.

Enjoy your MacBook non-CD2 (which AFAIK does not suffer this problem). Neither did the 15" PowerBook.

Hi Mick,

I have a MacBook Pro, non Core2Duo, (drive is set to Region 4) and I've just confirmed that it won't play a Region 1 disk in VLC, even with Action set to Ignore. I then tried a region 4 one and it worked fine.

Apple didn't have a lot of choice - only Matshita makes 9.5mm optical drives.. everyone else makes 12.5mm ones. I wish they had made these new systems use 12.5mm ones.. it doesn't seem like it would have been hugely difficult. Sigh!

I don't think this is Apple's decision. They don't have a choice in this matter if they have to allow commercial DVDs to play in the drives in their machines.

One other option is to install Windows, either bootcamp or Parallels. In windows you can download free software (RegionKiller etc.) that will allow you to watch any region.

If there is not any other way, thinking of Windows can be the only option.

Good write up

http://www.lowendmac.com/fishkin/06/0912.html