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DBX666 · Apr 30, 2006, 12:59 AM

I purchased an Intel Mac Mini running tiger w a Matshita CW8124 Combo drive in it.

After renting a few DVDs from the local vid store, and having to change the zoning a few times, it's locked up on zone 1.

After trying VLC as well as the Mac DVD player, I relaised I need some kind of Firmware Patch to get this drive to do me any good.

This is my first Mac after many years of PC usage and I am well ipressed with it, bar for this concern!

Could anyone point me in the direction of a patch new enough to deal with this?

icruise · Apr 30, 2006, 01:18 AM

You're limited to a certain number of region changes (and it tells you how many when you do the switch). It's intended for people making a semi-permenant move from one region to another, and not for people who want to use DVDs from several regions regularly. Did you you not realize this when you made the changes? Where are you located?

There may be a region-free hack of some kind available. I'll leave it to others to answer that.

nJm · Apr 30, 2006, 02:41 AM

There hasn't been a firmware patch for the CW8123 and that drive has been used in Macs for 3 years at least, quite probably longer. I'd doubt there would be a patch for the newer drive you have. All I can suggest is you use VLC to watch DVDs that are from a different region to your drive.

DBX666 · Apr 30, 2006, 11:08 PM

Alas, even VLC won't play em!

I'm pretty pissed with the (big chain) video store that rents dvds from various zones!

theokandroid · May 1, 2006, 12:04 AM

what stores do this?

nJm · May 1, 2006, 06:25 AM

Good question.

and also, why doesn't VLC work? Stick the DVD in, leave apple's dvd player running in the background with its region warning dialogue box and just open the movie in VLC... works like a charm on my iBook.

DBX666 · May 1, 2006, 06:13 PM

Tried that- VLC shows the name of the DVD, but when you click play, it just stays on 00:00:00

Could this be beacuse the drive is already locked?

DBX666 · May 1, 2006, 07:12 PM

United Video (a big chain) in New Zealand sells Zone 4 and Zone 1 dvds...

Apparently it isn't illegal to rent em...

Tuoder · May 1, 2006, 08:24 PM

Originally Posted by Gurner

United Video (a big chain) in New Zealand sells Zone 4 and Zone 1 dvds...

Apparently it isn't illegal to rent em...

It is legal here, too, to the best of my knowledge. That is a very silly thing for them to do, rent out zone 4 and 1. You night just consider geting an external drive and setting it to zone 4.

DBX666 · May 1, 2006, 08:33 PM

Yeah, a friend suggested this to me- seems a pain after wanting to have a nice compact all-in-one Mac.

ghporter · May 1, 2006, 08:41 PM

Zones are supposed to limit marketing to the areas the distributors want the product marketed in. That way, they might sell one edition of a film in the U.S., and a different one that might have different cuts to meet different local rules in Oz, and yet a different one for the Middle East. Selling/renting films from two different zones is asking for trouble-customer trouble.

In the fall of 2001, DVD drives available in the U.S. were required to allow only a certain number (usually 5) of region changes before locking permanently on the last region selected. Since the States are such a big part of the international market, most DVD drives are built this way. I think this is what the first problem is.

But VLC usually lets the user bypass the drive's lock, because it doesn't use the drive's decoder... I'm very puzzled.

P · May 2, 2006, 11:12 AM

DVDs are encoded. To decode, you need a disc key. This disc key is stored several times on the disc itself, but each time encoded with a player key - the same set of keys for each discs. There are about 400 of these player keys, which a player manufacturer can license from the DVD CCA. This costs 1 million US$ and signing a deal about how the player works, which includes region codes and the rules about stuff you can't skip (meant for the FBI message but sometimes used for commercials these days).

Anyway: If you don't follow that agreement, you lose the right to use your player key and the 1 million you paid for it, so either you enforce the rules or you get sued. The agreement lets you switch the region code 5 times. It is legal to disable the region codes, if you figure out how, because you didn't sign an agreement not too. The manufacturer can't do that, but they tend to make it rather easy to disable the region codes because it's a competative advantage.

What generally happens when playing a DVD on a modern computer is that the DVD-player keeps track of the region codes as well as the software player. The drive will not read the video data unless the drive is set to the correct region. What VLC does is that it reads the raw data - treating the DVD Video disc as if it were a DVD-ROM - and then decodes it internally. If Apple did this, it would be in violation of the DVD CCA contract. That's a not a problem for VLC, because they never signed that contract. They use a derivative of DeCSS to decode the disc without officially licensing a key. This works because the regino code is never checked for a DVD-ROM disc (there shouldn't be one). Some recent drives from Matsushita still check the region code for DVD-ROMs as well, which is why the VLC workaround doesn't work on them.

ghporter · May 2, 2006, 07:45 PM

P, very interesting info (especially the last part about the Matsushita drives). I knew much of it, but not any of the business end. Thanks!

Chinasaur · Jul 28, 2006, 10:30 PM

My new (bout 2 weeks) iMac Intel 2.0Ghz played DVD's for a few days and now does not. The DVD's don't even mount on desktop. I CAN play the DVD with VLC however. Profiler reports no problems. Since VLC can play the disc there isn't anything wrong with the drive....

Changes since it last worked: Upgrade to 10.4.7, SMC firmware update, added 2GB RAM.

I'm stumped. This is a 9.0 on my weird stuff-o-meter

Guess I'll try Onyx for a bit.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Chinasaur · Jul 29, 2006, 01:30 AM

A thorough thrashing by Onyx and a shut down fixed it. Watching Rattle and Hum via DVD Player and thankful things are back to working normally.

Weird and WTF????

Tenex · Jul 29, 2006, 07:56 AM

Originally Posted by DBX666

Alas, even VLC won't play em!

Yes it will. I playback regions 0 1 2 4 in VLC on my iMac. VLC ignores the region coding.

Have you reset Sys Prefs for CDs & DVDs to "ignore" when you insert a DVD? There's no need to buy a separate external DVD or change the region settings. NB you may have to use the VLC menu to open the DVD if drag & drop doesn't work.

HTH

Tenex · Jul 29, 2006, 08:03 AM

Originally Posted by Chinasaur

My new (bout 2 weeks) iMac Intel 2.0Ghz played DVD's for a few days and now does not. The DVD's don't even mount on desktop. I CAN play the DVD with VLC however. Profiler reports no problems. Since VLC can play the disc there isn't anything wrong with the drive....

Changes since it last worked: Upgrade to 10.4.7, SMC firmware update, added 2GB RAM.

I'm stumped. This is a 9.0 on my weird stuff-o-meter

Guess I'll try Onyx for a bit.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

I've had some very strange happenings on with my iMac since the .4.7 upgrade logical drives disappear from Finder etc or won't mount, a reboot seems to fix it ... same as XP

Grizzly Adams · Jul 29, 2006, 08:07 AM

I'm a recent switcher since May. I live in Japan and often play DVDs from the states as well as local region 2 discs. In Windows XP there was an app called DVD Region CSS Free I used which allowed one to watch any region DVDs without hacked firmwares by disabling the region check in major DVD players. Is there no such app in OS X? If not I suppose I will resort to ripping DVDs to HDD in Parallels XP with DVD Decrypter.

Grizzly Adams · Jul 29, 2006, 08:08 AM

Originally Posted by Grizzly Adams

I'm a recent switcher since May. I live in Japan and often play DVDs from the states as well as local region 2 discs. In Windows XP there was an app called DVD Region CSS Free I used which allowed one to watch any region DVDs without hacked firmwares by disabling the region check in major DVD players. Is there no such app in OS X? If not I suppose I will resort to ripping DVDs to HDD in Parallels XP with DVD Decrypter.

Nevermind I missed Tenex's reply about disabling the check in Sys Prefs. That answers it for me. Cool!

Tenex · Jul 29, 2006, 01:12 PM

Originally Posted by Grizzly Adams

Nevermind I missed Tenex's reply about disabling the check in Sys Prefs. That answers it for me. Cool!

Glad to hear it works for you - VLC is terrific freeware and should be more widely appreciated.

Tuishimi · Jul 31, 2006, 04:54 PM

Originally Posted by Tenex

Glad to hear it works for you - VLC is terrific freeware and should be more widely appreciated.

I think it is very much appreciated by those of us who often use it.