Multi region DVD playback

I have a 27" iMac and it's set to Region 2 for it's DVD playback. I used to have a cheap DVD player that could play any DVD region, but that went the way of the dodo sometime early last year. Now I have a stack of Region 1 DVDs that I want to rip to my hard disk, but any application I try (even VLC and Handbrake) refuse to play or rip the disk. It either crashes or appears to have frozen before spitting the disk back out at me.
I was going to buy a cheap USB DVD drive in the hopes that it would play the DVDs, but I'm not sure if the region lock is part of the OS (therefore making the USB drive worthless) or part of the firmware on the internal drive (making the USB drive plausible).
Does anybody have a solution? Free if possible.
Thanks

I'm in the same boat, but a bit worse off. I'm a Canadian, with a Canadian-purchased late-2008 Aluminum MacBook. BEST laptop I've ever owned. Except for the Matshita DVD drive, which has now used up its 5 allowed region swaps. I made sure the last one was to Region 2 (Canada/USA). But since I've been living in a Region 4 region now for years, my MacBook can't play any media coded for this region. There is also no firmware flash available for this drive (MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-868).
There is no logical or commercial reason for region coding. It is particularly onerous for those of us with portable Macs who travel / live internationally....

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    I bought my white Macbook back in the States, as well as my collection of DVD's. However, I am currently studying abroad in the UK for well over a year, and am frustrated to no end that I cannot watch anything but region one on my computer, without switching over to region 2 (and thus, making myself unable to watch my own dvds) - other mac users in the halls have warned me that you can only switch back and forth between regions so many times before your computer is completely screwed up. Is there any way to fix your computer to be multi-region?

    By licensing requirements of the owners of the DVD technology, computer DVD players and computer DVD drives limit you to five region changes before the drive locks to the region of the last DVD you use. Once the drive locks, you cannot play disks from any other region with the Apple DVD Player, and the drive itself may be locked as well; all current SuperDrives that I know of do indeed lock in the firmware.
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    Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

  • Multi Region DVD Please?

    I've travelled around a bit and I must now have DVD from pretty much every DVD region there is. Just bought the Mac book Pro and realized that you have to select one region and are limited to just 4 region changes
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    Thanks to all in advance
    R

    neuroanatomist wrote:
    Mr-Richard wrote:
    Is there software out there to help me (that does not invalidate my warranty).
    No.
    Buy an external optical drive, and use that to play your DVDs - those do not have the limitation in the drive firmware.
    You can submit feedback to Apple: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.htm
    this isn't true! apple has to do this because they pay for the codec & this is a requirement from the hollywood goons put on it, per license agreement for putting it on the machine. buying external drive is silly!
    Use VLC, it plays anything.
    http://www.videolan.org/

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