Tiger: To Buy or Not to Buy
 

I have recently bought a powerbook G4 with Panther installed on it, would it be worth getting Tiger? Also as I’m new to Mac OS, if I do buy Tiger can I wipe Panther OS completely and start with fresh install of Tiger?

Cheers

Since you are new to the Mac, it could go either way.
1) Keep Panther as it is very polished and well documented... smaller chance of having problems that you can't quickly and easily fix.
2) Buy Tiger and wipe the HD clean and get the latest and greatest... you'll have all the new features, but also the inevitable bugs of the first release.

So being new to the Mac do you want the highly polished Panther to be your first experience, or the unknown Tiger. I'm sure Tiger will be great... but it may have a few bugs or annoyances that affect you.

I guess it depends on how dedicated to the platform you are. If you're still making up your mind, I would say stick with Panther for now. If you're set on sticking with the Mac and don't want to migrate from one version of the OS to the next, then buy Tiger now.

Nice point there Staypuft well ive decided to go in to the unknown with Tiger might as well keep up with Mac OS since powerbook is a nice setup.

One thing that is annoying me at the moment is playing DVD’s it says something about my drives region but ive only found

Matshita DVD-R UJ 825
Revision DAM5? (Is this region?) I don’t get any options what so ever to change the region.

(Ps I know that people have posted in other threads ive looked quite a lot in to it think its locked! But ive managed to play 1dvd … Go me)

Also will this affect DVD copying and backup of data?

Noob questions I know but ive only had this laptop for 3 days, not 100% as of yet

Also what useful utilities are useful for Mac? (Hardware / Software ) also decent websites for desktops and whatnot.

Thanks

Region codes apply to different parts of the globe.

From this link:
http://hometheater.about.com/cs/dvdl...gioncodesa.htm

I found this:

REGION 1 -- USA, Canada
REGION 2 -- Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 -- S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 -- Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 -- Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6 -- China
REGION 0 or REGION ALL -- Discs are uncoded and can be played Worldwide, however, PAL discs must be played in a PAL-compatible unit and NTSC discs must be played in an NTSC-compatible unit.

Oh, and some sites you might want to check out:

http://maccentral.macworld.com/
http://www.macrumors.com/
http://www.macnn.com/
http://www.macbytes.com/
http://www.macfixit.com/
http://www.macaddict.com/
http://www.macupdate.com/
http://www.macosxhints.com/
http://www.snerdware.com/addressx/
http://www.thinksecret.com/
http://www.appleinsider.com/
http://www.hardmac.com/
http://whatismyip.com/
http://www.bsd.org/unixcmds.html
http://www.westwind.com/reference/OS-X/commandline/
http://www.macintouch.com/
http://www.osxfaq.com/index.ws
http://www.mac360.com/
http://www.osxfaq.com/Tutorials/LearningCenter/

Wow thanks for all the links there,

Still with the region settings I’m baffled, as I have no idea what Revision DAM5 means , is there any 3rd party application that can tell me if my drive is locked or what region it is or something?

http://www.osxfaq.com/Tutorials/LearningCenter/

Brilliant site , ill be reading more in to this later on today.

Revison DAM5 is probably specific to your drive. As for changing region codes, from the DVD Player help:

Changing the region code of your DVD drive

Many DVD discs include a region code. The first time you play one of these discs, your DVD drive is set to the region code of the disc. The drive's region code restricts DVD Player to playing discs with the same region code or with no region code.


Generally, the region code of your DVD drive matches the region code of the DVD discs available in the region where you live. However, if you insert a disc with a different region code from the one set for your DVD drive, a dialog appears to let you change your drive's region code.


You can only change the region code of your DVD drive five times. After that, the region code is set permanently and you cannot change it.


You should only change the region code of your DVD drive if you plan to play only discs with the new region code in the future.

I haven't tried this myself as I don't have any DVDs from another region, but some people report that VLC will play DVDs from other regions without forcing you to change the region of your drive.

http://videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

Download it soon, as there is some patent issue being decided in Europe that could be the end VLC in the near future. It's a great program for other reasons too (more codecs built in than Quicktime), so get it now and try it out.

I’m using VLC as it’s recommended quite a lot on these forums; I’ve managed to play Region 2 (UK) and its played once. If I use the original Mac DVD Player I get

The DVD-Video disk region code does not match the drive region code.

(Small print)
You cannot change the region code for your drive. ( so locked?)

But I don’t even know what region my drive is or how to find out

And if I use VLC I get no errors, but as I said ive only played region 2 disk once.

Did you buy the PowerBook used? If you bought it new, you should be able to change the region... if it's used, you can look for a way to set your drive to region free. It may result in a dead drive, and will void any warranty, so only do it if the PowerBook is out of warranty or you bought it used. Replacing the drive with a new one will allow you to set the region of the new drive.

EDIT* Seems there is no region free firmware for your drive. So if it's a used PowerBook you can keep trying VLC, or get another DVD drive. You can get a Dual Layer DVD-+R/RW drive from MCE for as little as $199 depending on which model PowerBook you have. They have international dealers as well.
http://www.mcetech.com/pbg4dvdr8dl.html

It’s a new laptop ive had it since Saturday and wanted to know more about Macs before I touched anything and found macoshints and read the forums found out about VLC and installed it last night and played with it for about an hour between working. But that’s as far as ive gotten really. Ive read other peoples post and it seems that the powerbook g4 can’t read region 2 anyway which is a pain in the arse. But VLC as once I might take it back to the shop and say about it. But so far ive not had an option at all to change the region of the DVD player. And ive not found a way to change the region for this DVD player. So I think to take it back or buy an external drive might be the only key

Thanks for all that have replied and helped

Ps: Thanks for the info about the Firmware ill have to buy a new dvd drive then :)

PowerBook G4

Talk to the shop you bought it from, because it should let you set the region 5 times, and the message it is giving sounds like it has used all of the changes. I believe only DVD Player version 1.0 was limited to Region 1 disks only. The current version should play any region... well once it sets the drive to that region.

I shall have a word with the shop I got it from Thanks for the input with the questions ive asked. I have to say it’s the best forum for friendly advice ive used.

Regards

To answer your earlier question of what region your drive is set to, you can try this DVD (it's under 1 MB so it's a fast download)
http://xvi.rpc1.org/regiondisplay.html
you download the disk image he made, burn it to a DVD and then play it and it should display the region your drive is set to.

Hey Staypuft ive looked at the site you posted there. I’m not 100% on what to download the PAL or NTSC. I’m from UK and we use Region 2 only.

I think the PowerBook will play either, but for the UK PAL is the standard.

I just downloaded the NTSC version and you don't need to burn a physical DVD. Just unstuff the image, mount the image, then open Apple DVD Player. If it doesn't start playing, go to File->Open Video_TS Folder and select the VIDEO_TS folder on the image and thenpress play.

Hey Staypuft ive looked at the site you posted there. I’m not 100% on what to download the PAL or NTSC. I’m from UK and we use Region 2 only.

Also ive tried more DVD’s with VLC it works perfect with 1 DVD and starts Dawn of the dead to its menu screen then the application closes I robot, well that doesn’t even load and sends VLC round the bend.

Apart from getting a new DVD writer or taking it back to the shop I think that’s as much as I’m going to get out of it.

From reading the site with the region checker, it sounds like it may be newer disks won't play until the region is set. Do you have some older DVDs? Mount the disk image from that site and see what DVD Player says. That will tell us what to do next... but it's mostly likey going to be "talk to the shop."

Yeah I have a few old DVD’s as I said I’m unsure what to download as PAL or NTSC

up a few posts... ;-)

Well Green writing says Region 1, which is for Canada, United States, and U.S. territories.

· The "Status: Good, Region n" screen is displayed when the player replied that it belongs only to region n. A valid player belongs to one and only one region. Of course, the region displayed must match the real one (i.e. the drive’s region if it’s region-locked, or else the region you set with Region (on Mac) or DVD Genie (on PC) - or any similar utility).

Sounds like it is locked at region 1 with no changes left... talk to the shop and tell them what you've found. They should be able to do something about it (new drive, new PowerBook).

I shall, thanks for advice Staypuft. Just a question since I can’t play any DVD’s outside region 1, does this mean I can’t copy / backup any UK ones that I have now? Since it can’t play them. Or backup UK DVD's but make them work with Region 1?

I don't know... will the DVD's eject since DVD Player won't play them, or can you mount them? I would imagine that Mac the Ripper
http://www.ripdifferent.com/~mtr/
would still be able to extract the DVD if it can be mounted. You can set a new region for the DVD in Mac the Ripper. By default it sets the disk to play in all regions, so you shouldn't have to set it specifically. It might not work for newer DVDs that use RCE (Mac the Ripper works with RCE disks, but I've only used RCE region 1 DVDs in a region 1 drive, I don't know about extracting a region 2 disk in a region 1 locked drive). I am curious to know though ;-)

Well if I just put the DVD’s in the drive it sees it fine, if I load Mac DVD player it spits them out at me. I’m downloading Mac the Ripper as we speak ill let you know the verdict

I’ve given up on VLC now ill find another way as well as going to the shop


Also a question regarding the topics purpose about upgrading to Tiger OS would I need Drivers for the laptop devices or are drivers already preloaded with Tiger?

Also if I take the laptop in to star bucks which has wireless net connection would it automatically pick up the internet?

What devices are you interested in? For the most part all the drivers are in the OS. Things like USB to Serial, USB to 802.11b, and other specialty devices tend to need drivers.

It depends on starbucks setup... in the US their networks are usually part of a pay service. Turning on Airport should allow you to see the network, but to connect to it you may need a username and password.

This has really strayed from the original question into a discussion about DVD compatibility. Let's get back to the original question. Thanks. :)