Set my DVD player to Region Code 0?

I have a Region 2 DVD I purchased and playing it forced me to change my DVD player settings from Region 1 so that I could view it on my iMac. I have 3 more changes left and would like to set my DVD player to Region Code 0 so that I can view all the DVDs in my collection without having to worry about this. Is there a fix for this or some 3rd party player I can install?
Thanks.

Hi Kort,
Using VLC you have to use option "Open Disc..." then you select the image that fairmount generated (I'm at work so I don't have my mac to check the exact name of the menu option).
This way you could see a DVD from other region without having to change the DVD player region, because fairmount has created a replica of the DVD without the zones protection.
Hope it helps.

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DVD player - Drive Region Code

Not sure if this is the right place to post this question...
But in DVD player, I want to play a "foreign" DVD, ie, from the US (I'm in A ustralia). But I get a message that pops up that says that it can't play the DVD because it's on a different DRIVE REGION code. Apparantly you can change the code five times but after that you can't change it anymore.
So my question... I can only change it one more time, after that is there ANY way that i can be changed again? Is there something (a driver perhaps?) that I can dwownload or even purchase?
Your help is much appreciated!

is it then possible to have two different DVD Player's going on my computer?? Not at the same time, but one won't override the other I imagine? How do I go about buying another one? I'll do a google search...
Thanks for the tip!

Dual Layer Disc Does not Play in Set Top DVD Player

Problem: Dual Layer Disc Does not Play in Set Top DVD Player
Solution: If your burner supports having its bitsetting changed, find a utility and change it to include DVD-ROM.
Additional Information:
DL (Dual Layer) is currently only a +R format. This is a serious problem, as you will find that on older players - and a lot of new ones - there is no +R support. It is not official, and therefore useless for any professional application.
By changing the bitsetting of your burner, it allows DLs (Dual Layer discs) to be burned with a book type of DVD-Rom and thus readable by many more players.
DVD player support drops off exponentially if your burner doesn't support bitsetting, allowing you to change the book type of your disc from DL to DVD-Rom. The DL book type will play on most newer software DVD players but not set top players.
If you've burned a dual layer disc without changing the bitsetting, it is a permanent semi-coaster as it will only play on your computer. I understand that newer DL burners are coming with firmware that automatically sets the book type.
Encore offers no control over book-type. My understanding is that this is a burner-specific parameter: some burners support allow themselves to be set and others do not.
Bitsetting (setting the Book Type) is specific to individual burners. There are some 3rd party software utilities out there that do a good job. The best thing to do is do a Google Search for your specific burner and find what works for yours.
LiteOn has a book type utility available for its DL burners:
I believe DVDInfoPro can set this on burners which support it.
Note: I would caution everyone who updates their firmware to check their bitsetting before burning DL discs. I don't know if it always returns to its default but it did in my case.
Bitsetting is done prior to burning the disk and generally only needs to be set once (unless like me, you update the firmware of your burner). The book type identifies to the player what type of disk is in it. Most players will play DVD-Roms with no problem. However, the book type of a DL disk is DVD+R DL as opposed to DVD-Rom and few players can read that.

Some general comments about the OP's several questions
Remember that reading a burned disc is not part of the original, core specification to play a DVD... so while most players do, now, they are really not required to do so to be able to play a replicated disc
This may (probably is) even more so with dual layer discs... the disc material is different, and a player that will happily read a replicated disc may have problems with a burned disc
There are many messages scattered in the forum, over the past several years, about brands of disc that are better... due both to overall quality control and the type of dye on the disc that is burned by the laser... with the bottom line being that not all discs are going to play in all players with 100% success
As for studio discs... there is software out there that costs many thousands of dollars which do many (up to 9?) encoding passes to get the best, and smallest, possible result to fit more on a disc

External DVD player/burner region free?

Hi there,
This kind of question has been posted before but the latest thread is from 2006 so I just wanted some up to date information.
My optical drive has been through its 5 changes and has settled on region 2. I want to watch and back up a region 1 dvd. If I were to buy an external DVD player would my mac force it to read only region 2 or would it be region free?
If it is region free does anyone have any recommendations on a good external DVD drive?
Thanks very much.

As I understand it, it is ultimately the DVD drive's firmware that determines that drive's region setting, not the Mac itself (although it's the Mac that initially lets you change the region stored in that firmware, up to five times). When you first connect an external DVD drive, its region encoding will be whatever the manufacturer set it to be.
If you want true region-free playback, you'll have to find a DVD drive whose firmware can be updated to make the drive region free. This process always used to be much easier on a PC than a Mac; I don't know if that's still the case.

DVD Player: multi-region or not?

I have just had my original ailing CD/DVD drive replaced by a new one: Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-107D. I inserted a new DVD to watch — a definitely European one — and a message came up, showing Region 1 (which is, I believe, North America), asking me to select a region and warning me that I would only be able to change the region four more times. I was alarmed: my old drive never asked me and was obviously multi-regional. So I ejected the DVD without selecting a region and without playing the DVD and inserted a DVD (again a European one) that I had played before on my old drive. It played with no questions asked. I then went back to the first DVD, and it, too, now played with no questions asked.
I am confused and worried. Has the drive and/or DVD software set itself to a particular region? Presumably not Region 1, because I can now play European DVDs.
Or is my drive (details as above) in fact multi-regional and was the message asking me to choose a region a red herring? I should be very grateful for any information or guidance.

I now realize that this region business is a matter of the DVD player included in my computer, not anything specific to the optical drive. The fact that I received a message that this was the first time I was opening the player and asking me to choose a region must have been because, in trying to sort out earlier computer problems, I had used first Onyx and then DiskWarrior to optimize my hard disk, which may have created new links between the player, the optical drive and other components. I also now realize that VLC will play DVDs and is, apparently, non-regional. So my problem has been solved even if, in the future, I may want to play DVDs from other regions.

Buttons over video doesn't work on set top dvd player

I've tested my project on apple dvd player & my set top panasonic dvd player and it works fine. my friend has tested it on his sony & a few other set tops without any issues.. I just put the disc in another sony dvd player & now the button hi-lites aren't showing up! To see if it was just the dvd player I tried a disc authored in scenarist that also uses buttons via forced subtitle streams & it works just fine. is my issue a result of using dvd studio semi-pro?
has anyone out there run into this?
p.s. both my track and disc settings have "force display" checked.

Unfortunately I have come across this all too often. So lets establish the facts here. The disc;
plays fine on stand alone DVD players
plays fine on Macs
plays fine on Windows computers
but it has trouble playing on her computer.
So her argument is that their must be something wrong with the disc...
Really?

How do I set the DVD region code via ARD?

We recently deployed around 200 MacBooks in a k12 environment and manage them via ARD & WGM. We forgot to set the DVD region when creating our master image and as a result, every single MacBook prompts for an admin password when attempting to use the DVD Player to view a DVD for the first time.
Instead of attending to each of the 200+ MacBooks personally and putting a DVD in and setting the region code one by one, is there a way I could do this via ARD? Unix command? Managed preference via WGM? Thanks, I appreciate any input.

I've been working on this very topic for about a year. Here's what you need to know.
1) setting the region code on your master image would result in the same behavior. Setting the region code triggers an update to the DVD drive firmware itself - it's not something that's stored in software. Obviously this is something that needs to be set on each machine individually. Setting it on the image won't affect the imaged-machines.
2) Apple seems to have gone to great lengths to hide the app that triggers this action. If they had provided a simple CLI interface to trigger this on a client machine we'd be able to use ARD to trigger the action on all of our client machines. Alas, this app is buried somewhere I can't find and seems to only rear its head when a DVD with a region code is inserted into the drive. There is one idea that popped into my head while at Macworld that I want to try to see if I can find this app but I have my doubts.
3) Failing my last ditch effort to find this app, I think our fallback will be to give users explicit rights to set the initial DVD region code on thier machines. This is something that can be done using WGM. There is a rule in /etc/authorication specifically allowing users/groups to set the region code for the first time. According to the notes, giving this access will NOT allow users to change the region code - which is a good thing - but only give them rights to do so the initial time. This way, we can empower our users to help themselves while also protecting them from resetting the region code accidentally.
In conclusion, I haven't found any way to script/push this command to a client machine. I'll definitely file this with Bug Reporter and hope Apple will give us a CLI or an ARD command to trigger this action after imaging.
G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)
G4
G4

Apple DVD player / region code

I apologize if this is the incorrect forum for this question, but I could not find a forum specific to the Apple DVD player.
Several months ago my internal DVD drive died and I replaced with an external LaCie firewire drive which I purchased from Apple. Until today all I have used it for is burning disks, and for that it has worked flawlessly. Today, however, I needed to use it to view a DVD. When I inserted the DVD i got a pop-up box which stated "Since this is the first use of a DVD disc, the drive region must be initialized before playing." A drop-down box gives me the options of regions 1-6, and 8. When selecting region 1, or any region for that matter, I get an error message which states "There was a problem changing the drive region code," and it gives me an error code of 10007. If I click Cancel the disk ejects and Apple DVD player pops up. Thinking there might be a problem with this disc I have tried several dvd movies. I do not get the pop-up box with the region code choices, instead Apple DVD player pops up, but the movie will not play. On screen it says "Supported Disc not available."
I tried the original disk in my G4 PowerBook and it plays fine.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The LaCie drivers haven't changed since 2008 or before. Traditionally, computer DVD drives ignore region codes (a region code is a feature which should be illegal, IMO). So, unless your computer is new, I'm guessing the region code block is programmed into 'DVD Player'.
I've a LaCie external DVD drive, and I found the free MPlayer produces a much better image than 'DVD Player'. Haven't tried VLC in several years, but it's considered my many the best.
MPlayer
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18580/mplayer
VLC
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/5758/vlc-media-player
Be sure the external drive is being accessed. (You might want to stock up on such software while that for Tiger is still available.)

Changing Apple DVD Player Region

My laptop is refusing to play a lot of DVDs - DVD Player opens but stays on a blank, black screen instead of loading the legal disclaimers and the DVD menu. If i use the little metal 'controller' to try to get the DVD to play then i get a no entry sign and a message that reads 'Supported disc not available'. Previously, i also get an error message that said that I needed to change my DVD region, (i think from region 4 to region 2, but i can't be sure as this was some time ago), but that it could only be changed two more times. So, because I don't want to set it to the wrong region just to play a couple of DVDs and then get stuck with that setting and not be able to play anything else, I want to know what the most common/official region for all UK DVDs is, and how to set it to that. I really don't understand the point of this nonsense, why am I limited as to how many times I can change this? And why do different DVDs have different region codes anyway, surely a DVD is a DVD, right?
Thanks in advance for any assistance with this matter,
LSRW.

Hi BDAqua,
Yes, I was aware of this, but the last time it prompted me to change the region it told me that I have two changes left, and I didn't opt to change it that time as I didn't know what I was doing and didn't want to use up a change. I have never changed it before myself, but I bought the laptop second hand.
LSRW

Only Change the DVD Player regions 5 times!?

Really, is Apple so cheap that it thinks that is relevant? I travel, I am an NGO, so I could change regions continuously but I am restricted on my Apple to five region changes. Five! I have now moved to Europe and cannot use the DVD player because I have changed it five times previously, yet i can buy a PC or a travel DVD player that will play any and all DVDs. I now have a useless piece of software on my computer and a have to carry another DVD player because Apple are ******* ******. I actually like Apple but this is ******* me off. Maybe its time to look at the competition...

neilfromwashington wrote:
I have changed it five times previously
And each time you were warned that, "You can change the region code of a DVD drive only five times (including the original setting); the fifth setting is permanent", weren't you?
Maybe its time to look at the competition
Definitely. And please do share the results.
Below is an excerpt from my Fujitsu Lifebook user guide (capitalisation and stress is theirs):
• ALL LIFEBOOK DVD PLAYERS ARE SET TO PLAY DVD TITLES WITH REGION CODE NUMBER 1 WHICH IS SPECIFIED FOR THE NORTH AMERICAN MARKET. THE REGION NUMBER IS A REGIONAL RESTRICTION CODE DEFINED BY THE DVD FORUM ACTING ON HOLLYWOOD REQUIREMENTS. DIFFERENT REGION CODES ARE RECORDED ON VIDEO DVD TITLES FOR PUBLICATION IN DIFFERENT AREAS OF THE WORLD. IF THE REGIONAL CODE OF THE DVD PLAYER DOES NOT MATCH THE REGIONAL CODES ON THE TITLES, THEN PLAYBACK IS IMPOSSIBLE.
• YOU CAN CHANGE THE REGION CODE ON THE DVD PLAYER USING THE PROPERTIES MENU OF THE DVD SOFTWARE. NOTE, HOWEVER, THAT YOU CAN ONLY CHANGE THE REGION CODE UP TO FOUR TIMES. AFTER THE 4TH CHANGE, THE LAST CODE ENTERED BECOMES PERMANENT, AND CANNOT BE CHANGED.

Dvd region code, prefs?

Hello. We have 500 or so computers in our company, and our "final image" does not have the region code set in DVD Player. Can I use Remote Desktop and blast out the DVD prefs? I ask this because a lot of people are going to use their laptops with DVD's. Do I need another pref? Thanks!

Once a DVD is created there is nothing you can do to actually change its content (except RW and RAM disks). Most DVD burning software include the ability to specify region code if you desire it. These articles should help you understand how it is set. If you have a specific burning software question other than iDVD about setting the region code, you might want to take it up with that software's tech support.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302970
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60183
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=31304
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60788

DVD Drive Region Code.... help?

On my dad's iBook G4 almost every dvd I get from the store comes up with the error message "*The DVD-Video disc region code does not match the drive region code.* (You cannot change the region code for your drive)"
I remember a while ago one of our relatives visited from England and probably played a dvd or two from England so I'm assuming that's how this happened. Is there any way to change the drive's region code? I'm guessing re-installing the OS might do it, but that would be last resort if my dad even considers it. I've tried VLC and others, but the OS seems to make the rules.... any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks:)

As per the conditions imposed on the rest of the world by the MPAA mafia, a DVD drive can be set to play DVDs from one of the 9 regions ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVDregioncode ) for a maximum of 5 times by the end-user. As a backup, there is a 'service reset' that can be used up to 4 times to reset that count, which means that a DVD drive's region can be changed an absolute maximum of 20 times.
The 'service reset' is used by service centers, etc., knowing that the unilluminated users will usually exhaust their 5-count accidentally, like in this case. I'd like to think that a Genius in an Apple Store o an Apple Service Center should be able to carry such a reset out. There are also utilities in the wild that allow you to do this, so you might want to Google your way around and see if you can find one for your specific Mac and DVD drive model. Note that this service reset is perfectly legal, does not invalidate any warranty or incur in the wrath of any law enforcement agency.
Reflashing the firmware on the drive with microcode hacked to be region-free also solves the problem. However, from the technical point of view, this is risky as any failure in the process will result in dead drive with no warranty and, from the legal point of view, breaks scads of different national laws making you liable for prosecution (if caught).

Audio playback problem with HP mediasmart DVD player

Hi I have just set up my computer and linked it to my tv with a HDMI lead, I have been able to toggle between my pc speakers and my tv speakers on programmes such as windows media player and other HP mediasmart programmes but when I use HP mediasmart DVD player - a DVD will allow me to change from pc speakers to HDMI but I cannot change to HDMI (TV) sound when playing a Blu-Ray disk. I have tried changing my defult to HDMI and its just not working when playing BLU-RAY disks. anyone got any ideas? i have all the latest updates (running windows 7)

I have a ThinkPad T61p which I got one year ago. About one month ago the following problem suddenly appeared: When I want to play a DVD with WinDVD, I get the message "no valid Drive/Disc Found". When I eject and then start the DVD again, it takes about 4 minutes to start the DVD. Everything is very slow, the movie is croppy and I can often hear the laser head moving back and forward. I don't have any problems with other media like CDs or self printed DVDs with no region code and copy protection. I also have no problems with another DVD drive of the same kind (I have a DVD/CD-ROM drive). I tried to solve the problem with the troubleshooter (I have Windows XP), but nothing helped. My settings seem to be all right. Could anyone help me with this problem?

Dvd player in G4

Hi,
my G4/400 AGP is equipped with a DVD ROM matshita SR-8583. It is locked on region code 2.
Is it possible to build in a second dvd player ? Or to connect one with another region code ?
hwk
G4_400 AGP Mac OS X (10.2.x)

Before doing anything with firmware you should spend some time reading
<http://forum.rpc1.org/viewforum.php?f=30>
The firmware I use in my Pioneer DVDR-110D is the version 1.37 RPC-1 from
<http://tdb.rpc1.org>. The latest versions of OSX Finder, iTunes, Disk Utility, and iDVD can use the drive with no patches.
To update the firmware you need DVRFlash v2.2 from
<http://lasvegas.rpc1.org>. It must be run from the Terminal program.
Before you update the firmware you should play a region protected DVD so a region code is set in the drive.
Once your drive is change to RPC-1, use Region X from
<http://xvi.rpc1.org/region.html> to change the region as needed.

DVD Player.app missing?

I tried the search, sorry if it has been posted before.
I bought a brand new MacBook Pro (the most basic model) two weeks ago and recently noticed that my Leopard lacks the DVD Player software. As of such Front Row usually displays just a blank screen when I try to watch DVDs. The DVD drive itself shows on all the system profiles etc, plays and burns cds perfectly and DVD's with VLC. Some other software refuse to play dvds because the region code isn't set up, which is quite difficult to do, without the DVD Player.app I searched both Leopard install discs that came with the machine and they too, lacked the DVD Player.app.
Any help would be very, very appreciated.

It's on your install DVD, but in an Archive ...
Grab a copy of Pacifist and you will be able to look inside them and Extract the one item you want to re-install.

Set my DVD player to Region Code 0?

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