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Watching American DVDs?

  • 23-01-2011 4:36am
    #1
    Zapp Brannigan
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,326 ✭✭✭


    Hey guys just a quick question,

    I'm currently over in Canada on a working holiday and I have my trusty MBP with me. Was just wondering if I buy a DVD over here will it play on my Mac? I seem to recall something about only being able to change the region of your drive once or something? (I could be pulling this out of anywhere though!)

    Cheers for any help!


Comments

  • #2
    Sad Professor
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,693 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    5 times. Then it will be locked.

    Someone will probably suggest that VLC player can bypass the region setting, but this doesn't work with most (if not all) MacBook drives. The drive prevents any access to the raw data on the DVD if the region doesn't match. There's no easy way around this.

    The only permanent solution is to hack/flash the DVD drive firmware. How you do this depends on the drive, often requires Windows and could potentially brick your drive if something goes wrong.


  • #3
    yer man!
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,653 ✭✭✭yer man!


    If you have windows on your mac too, can you use that OS to view multi region DVDs?


  • #4
    Sad Professor
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,693 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    No. This is not a Mac OS specific problem. It is written into the firmware of the DVD drive. It denies the OS any access unless the regions match. It may be possible to rip and decrypt the DVD in Windows though, but it is probably a lot of hassle. Flashing the drive is the best solution.


  • #5
    Zapp Brannigan
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,326 ✭✭✭Zapp Brannigan


    Cheers guys,

    I can just change it while I'm over here and then back to Region 2 when I get home. Sorted!


  • #6
    SgtBob
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 866 ✭✭✭SgtBob


    You could pick up a cheap external (USB) DVD drive and use that with VLC. I have an LG one myself and use that when I need to read a R1 DVD.


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