I'm not sure about KL, but in Bangkok original CD's are often 300 baht, which is only $US 7.50. I think that's quite a bit less than you'd pay in the US.

Well, I guess it depends. I went to Amazon.com and searched for: Miles Davis (since he was mentioned above)
and the first three CDs listed are $9 - $11.

pal & NTSC
 

Sure, my NTSC VHS tape won't work in Europe.

False !! Most of VHS player and TV are compatible with a lot of format
including NTSC usa,NTSC asia , PAL, secam, secam l, etc...
you can buy a product in swasiland and import in your country....
i think the problem come from the CAPITALIST MONEY MAKER !!

For the Code Zone, I play my dvd zone 1 in my tibook and
the zone 2 (where i live) with my Lacie external drive(zone 1 too !!!) ..
all start with DVD player.....

Vi-nce: leave the political-social commentary out of your posts in the future, please. Thank you.

DVD region code changed by my kids...help!
 

Hello

I have a Mac G4 1 gb powerbook with the Matshita CD-RW CW 8122. Ubeknown to me, my kids have mucked about with my region code setting and it is now stuck on region code 2. I am a legit user with no intention of defrauding anyone, and I object to being treated like a criminal before I have even considered becoming one! I just want to watch my DVDs!

I am advised that it is possible to get a crack to solve the problem, and I wonder if anyone can help me. I am not a mac expert so clear instructions needed.

I would be grateful for any help. :confused:

You'll have to search the web (e.g. via google) for "firmware" that is region-code-free. This would be something that is specifically made for the model of DVD player in your Mac. I don't have any links to suggest.
If you find such firmware, it should come with instructions.

You might also consider calling Apple to see what they suggest.

I just did a simple Google search on "mac dvd firmware hack" and came up with dozens of possible solutions.

If you don't want to much with your drive's firmware, the obvious solution is to use Video Lan Client (VLC) for all-region DVD playback.

I think that region-codes, DRM and DMCA are clearly the result of the copyright-mafia lobbying to outlaw fair use.

If an industry has become a sufficiently fat cat to have no clue how to adapt to a changing marketplace by doing something else than suing their customers, I have a hard time to see them as the innocent victims of evil pirates.

iTunes cleary demonstrates that legal online music stores work.
If you do what it takes to make them attractive, something the music industry has not been able to understand.

While I respect the policy of the forum to keep illegal hints out of here in order to keep clear of the sneaky lawyers, I would suggest to run a google search for something like

<name of your dvd-drive as shown in System Profiler> region-free dvd firmware

in order to get hold of a firmware that will solve your problem.

Be extremely careful to read, understand and follow all the instructions how to flash it or your could end up with a dead drive.

Like I said before, I think region codes are a pain in the butt.

I use the Apple dvd player for my region 1 dvd's and VLC for other
regions.

As for resetting the drive, I asked an Apple tech months ago when I took
in my mac for service and he said to just bring in the computer and
have them reset the drive for you.

Exactly the point that makes your argument correct. Regionalising DVDs is merely a method used by the industry to buy time. When DVDs were introduced world-wide, the technology was already there to do this sort of thing correctly but they did not act (same story for CDs.) Regionalisation is not the answer to curbing piracy and defies logic because in the end, whether you buy the DVD in Paris or New York, the rights holders have been paid.

So as for Intellectual Property Rights, there is a big myth that implies payments come for the point of retail sale which is absolutely untrue. Once the distributers have purchased the units, it's been paid for and the royalties come from that, not your money, months later at the register.

Although...when the person who's due the royalties gets paid is anybody's guess and is between that individual(s) and the industry through which they are contracted.

And as we have seen with the Record labels, they may not get paid at all because the RIAA (the organisation which is paid to collect these royalties) tends to use the money for further lawsuits rather than pay the artist - which by default, makes their existance redundant.

pirates and marketing
 

well i here the hardware that i own at home... an ibook g4 w/combo,
a noganet ext. case usb2 and a ricoh ata dvd rw...
long time ago i change for the fifth time the region on my ibook so i just can run region 4 dvd's with the apple dvd player, when i first plug the ext dvd and try to load a dvd on it, the dvd player ask for setting the region, i answer no, and with mac the ripper copy the movie to de HD with no region code and burn a free zone dvd that i can read with no problem in any dvd plyer...
so, the region theme just drive me to make copies of every dvd i own so i can play it with no problem...
it look that the region problem is a software limitation made by the dvd industry to get more money, of course, the only way to get away from it is making copys...
i can remember when i herd that there would be copy-proff cd's and i experiment the problem of making a copy of a copy of my girlfriend singin' with a md...

This thread is ceasing to have much to do with OS X experiences. Let's try to remedy that, shall we? :rolleyes:

Ahoy, all. The optical drive in my PowerBook G4 (12in, 1.33Ghz) is currently set to read DVDs with European encoding (region 2 I believe), and I'd of course like to play discs from home (the US). I've been using VLC player for a while, and when I read on this forum that VLC can get around the pesky region lockout, I was sold on VLC being the best video player out there.

Every time I try to play a non-European disc with VLC player, however, I cannot get it to work. I'm doing the following:

Inserting DVD, force-quitting DVDPlayer's "You gotta change the region setting!" alert.

Opening VLC with the DVD still fully mounted.

Going to File-->Open Volume (this may not be the best translation of the menu item, as my compter is displaying all of this in German)

Setting mount point to /dev/rdisk1 (it does this automatically)

Selecting the media type "DVD"

Trying to open it.

After I do this, there's a bit of a "hiccup", in which I hear the DVD drive spin up and see the VLC player window display the volume, afterwhich the drive spins down and nothing plays. The player window then returns to its native, non-playing state.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thanks.

I think significant differences might be that 1) when you buy Office, it clearly states on the outer cover what operating system it's intended for, and 2) there is no rental market for it to confound world travellers.

I'm having the same problem, except I'm trying to play Region 2 DVDs and my drive is set for Region 1. I can play Region 1 with VLC just fine, but nothing happens when I try to play Region 2. Any help with this issue would be much appreciated!

Hello everyone,

I have been looking all over the place to find a reasonable way to unblock the region code on my wife's eMac (with a HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4481 DVD player) and my G4 Powerbook with no luck, both running 10.4.

I need a solution that really "works". It is amazing how hard it is getting lately to find "exactly" what one is looking for on the internet, with the overflow of useless and false information and more new users asking really simple questions on forums (instead of looking in "HELP" first!) thus overcrowding the number of useless threads in forums.

Anyway, using VLC only partially solves the problem as this program does NOT function well with every DVD, depending on the level of protection. Nor does Mac the Ripper, not every DVD gets ripped correctly with Mac the Ripper. Although, some films with bad sectors which can not be copied correctly with Mac the Ripper can sometimes be played back just fine after converting them to .mp4 files using Handbrake. However these methods might not always work well with every DVD, and are extremely time consuming depending on the speed of your machine.

In any case, it is a major bummer to have to dish out a whole bunch of dough to get a Mac, and still be stuck with annoying restrictions of this sort. I just had to use up one more region code change to be able to watch "Shattered Glass" that I happened to rent in Zone2. Now, there remains only two more region changes on the machine!

I feel that it is not my fault if my local video clubs (I live in Switzerland) carry all kinds of zones in their stock, and sometimes the film I want to rent exists only in one specific zone and not another, so that I need to be able to change the region code regularly.

Any suggestions? Or should I get a PC next time around like everyone else?