[yoshiTA]

I have a growing problem: my DVD collection.

Since I travel a lot, I tend to pick up fresh movies at the airports. Because of this, my DVDs are pretty evenly split up between RC1 and 2. For some odd reason, consumers like me are being punished for not sticking to one region code. We’re allowed to pay for a movie but not allowed to watch it like we want. I guess there is some distant logic to this, however I don’t get it.

Since I don’t believe I’m the only one extremely annoyed by this problem, I thought about asking what others are doing these days to bypass the RC madness, running OSX.
A couple of years ago, in good old OS9, there were all kinds of small utilities, patches and whatnot to bypass the RC crippling. And it actually worked okay-ish. What happened to those hacks under OSX? Is the only way to watch a DVD to use VLC? Aren’t there any ways to hack the rc-lock? Literally all hardware players can be unlocked – why isn’t it possible with the DVD players in Apple’s setups???

If someone knows more, I’m especially interested in a solution for a powerbook 1.33 running 10.3.9 and a macbook pro running 10.4.7.

tia

yoshi

[Saltire]

Hi Yoshi,

Maybe not an ideal solution, but you could possibly use software such as MacTheRipper to rip the DVDs onto your hard drive (VIDEO_TS files). You can choose to remove the region code during this process. You could then burn a copy of your region-free DVD.

[yoshiTA]

thx for your quick reply Saltire,

No, that would be absurd. Ripping a DVD takes time - and when I do have time I very much enjoy not having to be in front of a screen. I would even be prepared to pay more to get my DVDs sans regioncode - only - such DVDs doesn't exist. Isn't there some easy way to just hack Apple's player? I don't endorse piracy but this is so upside down - why should I buy a DVD if I can't watch it?

[threestain]

Try here:

http://www.powerbook-fr.com/dossiers...article30.html

xvi used to break all the locks on the dvd drives, but apparently he's retired and moved on.

Shame as it's a complete arse of a system

[Gherkin]

Or try VLC instead of DVD player. It's meant to not worry about the region code problem but I haven't tried it in that way myself

[threestain]

I don't know if that helps with the drive itself is locking...

[Uncle Skeleton]

I know you probably have a laptop, but if you have a tower I would get a second DVD-ROM drive for $10 or so and just keep one drive on each of your 2 region settings. Maybe you can find an external enclosure that could make this work on a laptop...

Other option might be to get a pair of those tiny personal DVD players. I saw one on woot last week for about $67. Only a 7" screen, but the convenience might be worth it. I know, it irks me to pay The Man this extortion fee, but you did say you'd be willing to pay a bit extra...

[analogika]

The idea *used to* be that region codes would keep people from importing US DVDs into Europe or Asia before the movie even made it to theaters there.

Complete asshole system. The industry that thought it up really deserved that BitTorrent filesharing should be the solution.