Region Free

[Mis Mignon]

A friend put VLC onto my Mac OS X so as to avoid changing the regions everytime I use the DVD player. I don't seeem to be able to make it work at all -- is there something I am doing wrong?

Please advise -- I am dying to watch a certain DVD!

[More on Region Free]

Hi, 'I seem to have the same problem with DVD player in the Mac 10.4.6 and I am pretty stuck in Region 2 so when I am in the US I have to use my fantasy instead of watching anything! Apparently nothing can be done if the driver is fixed in Region 2 (in my case), but do these Macs have fixed drivers?
Thanks for help
Nora

A friend put VLC onto my Mac OS X so as to avoid changing the regions everytime I use the DVD player. I don't seeem to be able to make it work at all -- is there something I am doing wrong?

Please advise -- I am dying to watch a certain DVD!

[Aretino]

The whole region business is very weird, and though I have read detailed explanations of the mechanism, I still don't understand the experiences that users actually have with it.

As an experiment, I installed VLC player on a G4 Tower running 10.3.9. It would simply shut down if I tried to play a DVD other than the region to which the drive was set.

But, on my eMac, also 10.3.9, VLC player handles the Region 1 and 2 discs I've tried to play just fine though DVD Player balks at the "wrong" region. Why? Who knows!

You can buy region-free standalone players, and you can make your drive region-free by flashing the firmware. There's quite a bit of info about this on the web. Some users report this is an easy procedure with few hassles, some report it's a chancy operation that can actually ruin your drive.

Assuming you can track down hacked firmware for your particular drive and successfully flash it, you'll still need some means of switching the region of the drive as needed. There's an app called RegionX that will do this, but it has become a bit hard to find since its author "retired." Try:

http://www.ilovedvd.co.nz/dvddownloads.asp

Though I have the hacked firmware for my drive and even a little graphical interface for doing the actual flashing, and RegionX, I probably will remain too chicken to do this, at least as long as I can get VLC player to work region-free.

[mike.be]

First I would suggest writing to the studios and telling them you will only pirate films if they don't stop this nonesense!

Now, here is the simplest solution: download Mac The Ripper (freeware) and rip your DVD to your hard drive. This can remove the region code. If you don't want to have all your movies on your hard drive, just burn them back onto a blank DVD. Yes, it adds extra cost to the films you buy, so that is why you should tell the studios you are sick of their bullshit and will turn to pirating if they don't stop!

[Aretino]

I've never tried Mac The Ripper, tho elsewhere in these forums I think I read a complaint from someone saying that this didn't work for him.

If you don't recompress the thing, it will take up a lot of disk space!

Region coding is one of the silliest and most annoying aspects of commercial DVDs.

[mike.be]

I've used it many times with no problem. If you are worried about space, you can tell it to rip only the film and leave out the extras. If you want a different solution with highly-compressed films, try Bittorrent -- it works very well and you don't need to buy the DVD from the Hollywood thieves.

[Maeve]

I am in the US (R1) and own four R2 DVDs. Of these, two play with no trouble on my iBook G4 (Matshita UJ-845-E) using VLC, but two will not. The only thing the two that don't play have in common is that they are both BBC DVDs.

Because some discs play and others don't, I have trouble believing that this is a drive issue. Any other ideas on what might be causing the problem? I'm running VLC 0.8.5 on OS 10.4.7. All suggestions welcome!