[Macworld]

Post your comments for Wrestling with DVD region coding here

[Jon Seff]

The other option, if you're willing to watch DVDs on a TV set instead of your MacBook Pro, is to buy an all-region DVD player that handles NTSC and PAL.

[Stormchild]

Just for the record "Matshita" is actually Matsushita (aka Panasonic, Technics, etc.), abbreviated due to an 8-character constraint in the hardware. There's no such company as Matshita.

[x5josh5x]

Helpful article, and one close to home since I live in Japan but have a large collection of U.S. DVDs. However, the issue is more complicated than it seems. Here's the information I've been able to put together and method I use, starting with two issues with the article:
1. If the VLC option doesn't work because of your Matshita drive, the Handbrake/Mac the Ripper option most likely won't work either.
Mac the Ripper will give you a message that the disc has 'bad sectors' and was unable to rip it. In actuality, the drive's firmware detects that the region of the disc is different and prevents you from ripping it. In that case, the second option is probably your only choice.
2. If you buy an external DVD drive, there are a few extra steps you need to take to make it work. I'll try to explain them as clearly as I can. While you can have each drive set to a different region, your DVD Player software doesn't know they drives are different players.
Region settings are maintained both by the firmware of the drive and in the DVD Player software. You need to switch the DVD Player software region setting without changing the drives' firmware settings.
To do this, you need to use a program called 'Region X'. This will let you change the DVD Player software region so that it won't prompt you to change the firmware region of the drive.
The way I have it set up is in 'System Preferences', under 'CDs & DVDs', I have 'When you insert a video DVD' set to launch 'Region X'. That way, I can always change DVD Player's region (and reset it's counter) to match the region of the drive and disc I will be viewing.
One little hiccup, though. The developer of 'Region X' has retired. Look for version 1.1.3, it is a universal binary. However, it still has some issues running on Leopard.
Also, with Leopard, Front Row maintains it's own information on regions, so you'll have to watch your Region 2 DVDs with DVD Player, not Front Row. It should still work for your Region 1 DVDs.
I hope that is helpful and understandable.

[rickcarl]

My answer as a tri-national (Regions 1,2,4) is all of the above.



I agree with JS. South Korea's LG makes region free players and they will be happy to provide the codes for conversion. Or, you can buy a Region 1 player in the US and ship it with you.



I also have a multi-region DVD player/burner with a firewire connection. For that matter, I have two Macs and only use Region 1 in one and Region 2 in the other.



Mac The Ripper is usually your friend.



If you buy all your DVDs from China they will be cheaper and de-DRMed and pre-ripped. I have a stack of those. As you know, different laws prevail in different locations. Just don't try to cross legal boundaries.

[Stormchild]

Oh, and the current publicly-available version of MacTheRipper (2.6.6) is unable to rip many newer DVDs, as they employ some new copy protection techniques designed to mess with DVD-ripping software. There's a beta of MacTheRipper 3.0 in the works, but you have to give the developer a "gift" of a suggested $20-50 value to get a copy of it, and there is no way to try it out first and see if it will even work.
Another option is FairMount, a free utility that comes with DVD Remaster (download the DVD Remaster demo; FairMount is included and does not require a license). FairMount can unencrypt a DVD and "mount" the unencrypted copy as if it was an actual disc, which can then be played by DVD Player. Depending on the copy protection method used, you may want to rip or convert the disc after mounting it with FairMount, as it can take quite awhile to mount a disc this way, and you might not want to go through all that every time.
This is fresh in my mind, as I just went through all this yesterday after receiving a Japanese DVD in the mail and being unable to watch it on my Mac's region 1 drive. Unfortunately in my case, I couldn't get anything to work; MacTheRipper 2.6.6 fails to rip it, and FairMount struggled to mount it, then the mounted disc wouldn't read. I don't know if the MacTheRipper 3.0 beta will handle it, as I cannot even try it out without giving a gift to the developer, and I'm not too into the whole "buy before you try" concept.
Nonetheless, I have been able to work around the copy protection on some DVDs with FairMount (note that I'm not talking about pirating movies; I own the movies and simply wanted to convert them to put them on my iPod), so it's worth a try.

[Chris Breen]

That's really helpful, thanks Josh. In researching the answer I looked for small details exactly like these but came up empty. I'm glad you've been able to provide them.

[MrLizard]

Another day, another reason for bit-torrenting videos.

[Quatermass]

I'm an American who decided to emigrate to England several years ago and brought over a hundred Region 1 discs with me.
After my last region-free DVD player finally died, I resolved to dupe the most-watched films in my collection, keep the copy in the Land of Hope and Glory and give my parents the original disc to watch in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
I have an ancient Mac Mini and a fairly new 24 inch iMac aluminium - and quickly discovered that the new iMac just couldn't read the Region 1 discs (without changing the regional encoding). The old Mac mini, though, worked like a charm ...
I obtained a copy of MacTheRipper 3.0, installed it on the Mac mini and began to rip a whole host of DVDs. The resulting region-free and RCE-free (really really annoying) VOBs and such play beautifully in Front Row or just with DVD Player.
I tried burning a dual-layer DVD with Toast 7, but got a disc error. Whoopsy. I then bought a copy of the latest and greatest Toast 9, made a DL disc image and burnt a fresh new dual-layer, region-free DVD this eve!

[pln]

I haven't done a lot of ripping (mainly my kids Dora and Scooby Doo DVDs, to avoid having to buy new copies when they scratch them up) but I haven't yet come across a DVD that neither MtR (MacTheRipper) or HB (HandBrake) could handle, albeit with some work occasionally.
MtR 3.0 is your best bet for a Mac solution, and you should be able to find it online for download without having to "donate" anything. That said, it's such a useful program, I say go ahead and donate. The developer really deserves it.
HB has one bug that's hit me on a couple of DVDs - but if you find that it crashes while starting a rip, try loading the source using File/Open Source (Title Specific).
One more thing you can attempt if MtR or HB fails ... if you have Windows running under BootCamp or VMWare or Parallels, you can download and install DVD Decrypter and try that. Again, I've only used this for a couple of DVDs but it works.

[dougoftheabaci]

Depending on your drive, you CAN make it region free. You know how I know? I've done it with mine. For anyone with a UJ-857D Super Drive, you can as well. It's a bit of technical adventure and is easier if you have Tiger instead of Leopard, but it's entirely possible.
What it allows you to do is use RegionX to switch your drive region as many times as you wish. Check out the firmware here.

[Fixx]

I have mostly given up buying DVDs because the problems MBP has with regions. I may continue to buy them if superdrive problems go away someday, or if there will be available a high quality, portable and affordable hometheater solution (unlikely).

[jochenWolters]

The site already mentioned by Doug is very well worth visiting, as it does provide the broadest range of modified firmware installs for DVD drives used in Macs.

http://www.macbook-fr.com/dossiers/dvdregionfreeenarticle30.html


As for stand-alone DVD players, most can be set to a specific region, or made entirely "region-free," as well. All it takes is pressing a few buttons on the remote control and maybe opening and closing the disc dray (seriously...!). videohelp.com has a forum listing tons of such "hacks" by player model:

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks

[dammarin]

Apple's insistence on making playing different region DVDs as hard as possible (by installing the obnoxious Matsushita drives)is really puzzling. I doubt it stems from trying to please the studios, since the "industry standard" seems to be much lower in this case.
This problem seems to affect a very small percentage of users, since I guess most people just buy what's in shops in their home country and never worry about anything else. When it does affect someone, however, like when they move from one "region" to another, it becomes a real irritation, one that can really push someone towards "not buying DVDs anymore".
From my experience with set-top boxes, Sony locks their DVD players very effectively (hardware modifications necessary), with some other companies not so much. I have a couple of Yamaha players (different models) which were ridiculously easy to unlock. I hope they live long lives :-)
I have some experience playing DVDs with Linux on different drives, and VLC has always done an admirable job, without the need to mess with the drive's firmware. Also, of the Macs I use (a 2005 mini with a combo drive and a 1-year-old MB with a Superdrive) they both work with VLC/Fairmount no problem.
They should really stop this region coding silliness, not only Apple, but especially the movie studios. I don't think it's really working and it just puts a small but apparently vocal minority off buying discs. But I guess someone deemed the DVD-region folly a success, since they're back in Blu-ray.