RPC2 DVD Drive works with VLC !

[xiaodidi]

I was surprised to see that my Mac mini, with the infamous matSHITa drive

MATSHITA CD-RW CW-8124:

Model: MATSHITACD-RW CW-8124
Revision: DACD
Serial Number:
Detachable Drive: No
Protocol: ATAPI
Unit Number: 1
Socket Type: Internal

allows me to play at least one DVD with Region 2 only. The DVD is one of the movies issued with "The Times" of London: The Times London Films Festival - Cabaret.

I must mention that I didn't change the drive region at all so far, so the mini is like out-of-the-box.

DVD player promptly identifies it as Region 2 and asks me to change the drive region (fat chance!)

However, VLC 0.8.2 plays the movie to the end without glitches. Likewise MTR 2.6.6 rips it without problems.

All other Region 2 movies I tried are a no-go with VLC, and even MTR has problems.

Can somebody explain this? Are we on to something?

[fkuehne]

Nope, I noticed this behaviour with some DVDs on my new iMac G5 before setting a region code and I can't explain it actually, except that there seems to be something wrong with the region-code on this DVDs.
Since some other Region2-DVDs didn't play at all without setting the region-code, I was forced to set it in the meantime.
Thus, the situation didn't change actually, but there are some exceptions.