Playing region 1 DVDs on a region 2 mac

2nding MacTheRipper. You can rip and strip out the region encoding. If you have a strong need for a physical disc, you can even burn the new ISO to a blank DVD and it will work fine in most DVD players and computers. If you have tons of disc space on your network, you can even save all the ISOs and just mount as needed and watch whatever movie you want without a disc.

There are firmware hacks for some of the Matsushita drives used in Macbooks. Go http://forums.macnn.com/69/macbook-pro-and-powerbook/346700/region-free-dvd-firmware-c2d-mbps/ and see if you have a model number that matches. This procedure is not risk-free, so don't blame me (or anyone else) if you ruin your dvd player.

Interesting. It seems that it DOES work, as I can now rip my DVD's from region 2 (I love Handbrake!), but I can't play them in front row... I will check to see if there is some sort of region checker in there...

There's another option that no one seems to have mentioned -- if you have a MacBook, you could install Windows. I got tired of VLC et al refusing to play so many copy-protected DVDs on my MacBook (both regions 1 and 2) so now I split the difference: I leave the OS X DVD Player set on region 1 (since I play those more often) and when I want to play region 2, I just boot into WinXP.

Clarification: I mean get a cheaper external DVD drive, probably in a Firewire-to-IDE box so you can interface it to the Macbook. You may need to put the drive into a PC's internal bay to do the firmware flash, and then move it into the Firewire box once the deed is done.

The answer is 'no,' unless you update the firmware. Unfortunately, the kind folks who brought you the DVD Region Code nonsense in the first place (in order to better gouge you!), decided to "improve" the system a few years back. Rather than just enforcing the region codes in the playback software (trivially avoided by using software that ignores it, like VLC, or most el-cheapo Chinese set-top DVD players), they started mandating that the region coding be enforced by the drive mechanism itself, in firmware. The drives have only a certain number of region switches before they're (more or less) permanently set, just as an additional charming feature. You can get 'region free' firmware hacks for many common drives, but I woudn't do it to your expensive MacBook internal drive. If I were you, I'd get a cheaper generic DVD, and hack that instead. (Or just get one that's old enough that it doesn't have "RPC2" -- that's the crippling technology -- anything from 1999 or earlier is safe, if you can find it.)

I got region-free firmware for the SuperDrives in both my iMac and my MacBook from http://www.powerbook-fr.com/dossiers/dvd_region_free_en_article30.html.

Hmm...I just tried it myself on my 2.16 Macbook Pro (UJ-857 with HAEA firmware), and it works great! I can now watch my Louis Theroux DVDs from the original discs, instead of my MTR'ed rips. Thanks for the link, sharkfu!

Hmmm. It doesn't seem to work. The stages all worked - the DVD drive now displays as region free, but changing the region with Region X has no affect at all. Bah. Nothing got screwed, but it doesn't let me read my region 2 things. The disk image appears (as usual) but I can't play it. Arses. I got all excited and everything.