region free?

[panther]

does VLC work to play both region 1 and two yet, on the Macbook Pro 17" Intel? The drive is a MATSHITA UJ-846. thanks

[krmathis]

Yes, VLC play all regions that your DVD drive are activated for!
But if your drive is not region free, as in ex. locked to region 2, VLC can not override this.

[helmuthelmut]

Apparently VLC worked as region free before, but not anymore with the most recent Intel's Macbook and Macbook pro.
Does anybody have a solution for watching region 1 and 2 dvd on an intel macbook without locking the drive in a specific region.

i used a PC before and there are many freeware that let's you watch any dvd from any region. I cannot find a similar program and that is a major set back for me.

Any help ?

[jclark]

Apparently VLC worked as region free before, but not anymore with the most recent Intel's Macbook and Macbook pro.
Does anybody have a solution for watching region 1 and 2 dvd on an intel macbook without locking the drive in a specific region.

Any help ?

Unfortunately I don't have an Intel based mac... but I did get a bunch of messages when I put my Region 2 disks in, indicating that I had 4 times to play before making the choice permanent.

I disabled the auto start on the standard Mac DVD player, and have since then used VLC to play DVD's from both zones.

The zoneness is one of the most objectionable things about DVDs... Before computer DVD players, the 'zoneness' restriction could have just been based on PAL, SECAM, and NTSC. That would have limited the 'markets' because most consumers would not have analog transcoders to reformat the media...

And of course a rethink on the 'marketing' strategy that has as its basis the 'timed' release of programming... and often for 'small' markets means 'timed' means never. When I was in Germany recently it was pretty damn difficult to find a DVD that wasn't a hollywood dubbed product. Which is to say, the number of german films available is small relative to the world market, and only a few would be transcoded and released in the US, and further... they never have german closed captions... only english, french and spanish...

But I digress...