The VideoLAN Forums

I am having trouble being able to watch DVDs on VLC media player from any region. I have installed it twice and I get the same problem. I keep getting the majority of the time: access_file error: read failed (Permission denied). What am I doing wrong??

i think its cause the optical drive in your MB is locked to only one region and VLC has to follow the region the optical drive sets, older drives was able to be flashed to unlock them to play any region (AKA region free), but i do not think the drive in the MB is able to be unlocked. i dont know if i am correct or not cause i dont have a MB or any intel Mac to try.

please read here http://lasvegas.rpc1.org/ and study up to see if your optical drive can be flashed for region unlock (warning, if you flash the drive it will void any warranty you have on your MB) also it has the ability to kill your optical drive if you choose the wrong firmware or do something wrong. and its not my fault if you do choose to try and you kill your drive. most drives can only be region switched 5 times if they are not unlocked. once you change it the 5th time it will remained locked in the region you set forever ( even if you try to flash it to unlock it after the 5 time)

the VLC works fine in download anything and want to watch it through there, but not with DVDs. But if my VLC is locked due to the region, then why wont it at least play that regions dvd?!?!?!

the VLC works fine in download anything and want to watch it through there, but not with DVDs. But if my VLC is locked due to the region, then why wont it at least play that regions dvd?!?!?!

cause the DVDs them self are locked to a region, if you are trying to watch a region 2 DVD and the optical drive is set to region 1 you will not be able to watch it unless you change the region on the optical drive to match the region of the DVD. VLC follows what the drive is set to (this can not be changed if you have a region locked optical drive (some optical drives allow 5 user region changes with the stock firmware) if you change the region 5 times the region set for the fifth time will be what the drive is locked to and can not be changed.

now if you flash the optical drive for region free only then you will be able to watch any region DVD with VLC, but this is if you haven't used all of the user changeable region settings on the stock firmware. if you have used them all (if the drive supports it) then even flashing it to a region free firmware wont unlock it cause the region gets hard locked on the firmware so even flashing wont solve it.

VLC will work for anything downloaded, a DVD isnt the same as these downloaded files, cause the downloaded files do not have a region lock on them, DVDs do.

the VLC works fine in download anything and want to watch it through there, but not with DVDs. But if my VLC is locked due to the region, then why wont it at least play that regions dvd?!?!?!

Maybe your drive isn't actually set to a particular region yet.
If I'm not mistaken, in order to play DVDs using Hollywood's brain-dead scheme, the drive needs to be set to a given region (it is also necessary before you upgrade to region-free drive firmware). VLC, since it doesn't take regions into account, probably doesn't do that, whereas Apple DVD Player definitely will. Have you ever tried playing a DVD from your standard region (or the one you have more DVDs from) using something else than VLC? If not, that could be the source of your problem.