How do I set the DVD region code via ARD?

I've been working on this very topic for about a year. Here's what you need to know.

1) setting the region code on your master image would result in the same behavior. Setting the region code triggers an update to the DVD drive firmware itself - it's not something that's stored in software. Obviously this is something that needs to be set on each machine individually. Setting it on the image won't affect the imaged-machines.

2) Apple seems to have gone to great lengths to hide the app that triggers this action. If they had provided a simple CLI interface to trigger this on a client machine we'd be able to use ARD to trigger the action on all of our client machines. Alas, this app is buried somewhere I can't find and seems to only rear its head when a DVD with a region code is inserted into the drive. There is one idea that popped into my head while at Macworld that I want to try to see if I can find this app but I have my doubts.

3) Failing my last ditch effort to find this app, I think our fallback will be to give users explicit rights to set the initial DVD region code on thier machines. This is something that can be done using WGM. There is a rule in /etc/authorication specifically allowing users/groups to set the region code for the first time. According to the notes, giving this access will NOT allow users to change the region code - which is a good thing - but only give them rights to do so the initial time. This way, we can empower our users to help themselves while also protecting them from resetting the region code accidentally.

In conclusion, I haven't found any way to script/push this command to a client machine. I'll definitely file this with Bug Reporter and hope Apple will give us a CLI or an ARD command to trigger this action after imaging.

G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

G4

G4

Look here:

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/tools.html

setregion

/usr/bin/setregion is the command line utility for setting the DVD drive's "region".

I've never used it. Good luck.

i took a look at this last week - apparently there's no actual access to this utility. When you try to access it it simply exits. There's no man page or anything.

Is VLC an option?

I deploy a large amount of stand alone machines and use VLC instead of DVD player due to this annoying issue.

VLC does not care about region codes and the restricted users are setup to launch VLC on DVD insertion

Ed

http://www.wurst-wasser.net/cgi-bin/wurst-wasser.net/wiki.pl?LetUserSetUpDVDROMR egionCode

This is the best solution I've seen, it changes permissions to let the user set the INITIAL region, but does not allow subsequent region changes.

Pushes nicely down the network via UNIX. Haven't set it up on the master image yet to see if it dupes nicely.

Variety of Flavors Mac OS X (10.4.8)

VLC doesn't care about region codes but loading a DVD with menus has about a 30% chance of working. If the Video comes up it doesn't have audio or just doesn't play.

I have tried many times with many different dvds and regions here and had no luck.