Superdrive on MBP not region-free?

Today I wanted to enjoy watching a DVD on my MBP only to find out that I had to set the region of my drive first and that I could only do this four times!

I live in Europe and thus have many region 2 DVD's and I also buy many DVD's from Amazon which are region 1. How can I play my DVD's then? Is this actually legal what Apple does?

 

No retail DVD drive is region free. You have to hack it have a software to remove the region lock when you rip it.

 

I'd think it'd be illegal if they didn't set a region on the DVD drive. Like it or not the movie studios require region support in order to control how and when movies are released which is probably their legal right as part of distribution rights in copyright law.

Just use VLC, which is free, to play DVDs. VLC ignores regions.

 

I don't think it's illegal since you bought the DVDs after all

 

Well you can always buy whatever discs you want. But region coding is part of the DVD spec, so drive makers are supposed to include it to be compliant with the DVD standard.

 

VLC doesn't play the DVD either. It crashes when I try to make it play the DVD.

 

I've had many retail drives and this is the first time (with my first Apple) that I'm confronted with this baffling restriction.

 

VLC should definitely be able to play it if the DVD is ok.

and any computer you buy in U.S. will all definitely have region restrictions on a DVD drive, I would imagine you haven't tried the same DVD on another computer or DVD player. and for most countries I would imagine, since it is a "feature" of DVD itself.

blu-ray should hopefully help see this stupid form of DRM on its way out. it does nothing to prevent bootleggers or pirates.

 

It is legal and conformed! And Apple is not the only one, not counting other normal dvd player manufacturers.

This is not true. Very fews, if any left, offer a region free internal optical region free. Hacking sites promoting firmware modification are being closed left and right.

One is skirting with bypassing commercial rights/security, by using firmwares not offered from the manufacturers direct.

cheers ...

 

Just made a copy of a region 2 DVD (yes, that's legal, I can make a copy for personal use) and that one plays with no problem on the MBP region 1 set superdrive. So it looks like it's only to annoy people with legitimate copies. You'll be just fine if you use illegal copies!

 

Yeah, VLC should work. There's no real other way around it, unfortunately. Its DRM, and that's why this sort of DRM should go away .

 

I completely agree! As a matter of fact, there's a few cool DVD's I wish to get from Amazon UK (they will ship to the US), but they are region 2, but considering they are not available here in the US, I'll have to get them there.

 

Does anyone know the legal implications of using AnyDVD in a situation like this, just to play region restricted DVDs?

 

The dvd drives used on Mac notebooks are typically the Matshita brand. You are allowed to change the region 5 times I believe, before it gets permanent. There is no way to bypass the region check for genuine dvd's with software like VLC, AnyDVD and similiar. You usually can do it with other brands.

The only way to get rid of the region locking on Matshita is to flash the drive to a new region free firmware, or a firmware that allows changing of region via software. Such firmware does not exist for the latest Matshita drives.

 

Thanks for the tip Any other tips from others here

 

You can rip the DVD then re-burn it again. The new DVD will be region free. There are TONS of applications that can do this.

I don't know what's the legality of this, but you're making a "backup" of your DVD...

 

It would suck to have to do this while you are on the road. If one is overseas one should be able to buy a DVD and pop in a movie to watch while one is on a business trip or vacation overseas. I don't see the use of a notebook with a DVD player that can only play DVD's in their own country

I buy this $2000-3000 Macbook pro that comes witha DVD player that can only play DVD's in my own country or region. Laptops should be able to play all DVD's in all regions with no strings or regions attached.

 

Like the other poster has mentioned, it's the STUDIOS that made the restrictions. MGM, Sony, etc. Try this: buy a DVD from other countries and played it on your US-based DVD. It will not work. Even console games like PS2, Wii and XBOX360 has region restrictions. It is not Apple fault

If you desperately need to watch DVD bought from another region, Google is your friend. Here, I help you: http://creativebits.org/toolbox/how_to_play_different_region_dvds_on_your_mac

 

It's Apple's fault in one way, because they chosed to use the "very hard to get region free" Matshita drives in their notebooks. They could have picked other brand, that allows for the software bypass technique. Have a look on the rpc1 forum to get an idea about these drives, they even have a mac section.

http://forum.rpc1.org/index.php

When googling on "dvd region free", this page with this software shows up:

http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-region-free.htm

Note on the bottom of the page that they they do not support Mathsita 8XX drives, which Apple uses. For these drives, you usually cannot even rip the dvd, because the drive requires the dvd region to match to access any data from the disc at all. At best, you get garbage data.

In short, if you have one of the later Matshita 8XX drives, you are screwed. The normal bypass techniques will not work on these drives. There was a custom firmware developed for earlier 8XX models to bypass region, however for the later ones there is no such firmware.

A google link:

http://www.interrupt19.com/2008/10/06/get-around-that-pesky-dvd-region-code-nonsense/

 

Like someone else already mentioned, VLC does not work either on the more recent drives.

 

I should start selling portable DVD players that use USB ports from Taiwan to the US