Why can't I play dvd's from different regions?

[Guest]

I am using a PowerMac g5 dual 2. I live in Australia and quite often buy dvd's from the states. I ahve been trying to play my us dvd's on my Mac using vlc, but I always, ALWAYS, get errors and it fails to play them.

This is really frustrating me as everyone seems to say that vlc plays multi regions no probs...

Is there something I am missing?

[fkuehne]

Yeah, since about 2 years ago, VLC can't play DVDs from other regions anymore. This is due to a new firmware on DVD-drives, which prevents any region circumvention. There is no way for us to restore the former functionality. All you can do to watch American DVDs is buying a second drive and locking that to region 1 or getting a drive with a RPC1-firmware, which will be at least 2 years old.