If you really need to- Mac the Ripper takes off region encoding. I've used it a few times to rip DVDs of films not available in the US (hope I didn't say anything illegal, I own the discs).
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I want Region free
- Thread starter beyondsalvage
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But you still won't be able to rip from a DVD that isn't the same region as your drive. This has been done to death a thousand times on these forums: The new drives cannot be unlocked as of now. Period.
Or that is isn't available in the region you are in but is in another. It also is a form of consessions to movie theaters. Some movies take weeks to get to other countries, and sometimes the DVD is out before the theatrical release is (in those countries).
Yes, you can. I've done it more than a few times on my PM G5. It's only a year old. I get a weird region message box saying this is a region 2 disc and can't be read- blah, blah blah, but I just ignore it. DVD rips fine. Is it just the laptops?
What DVD drive to your have? All the new Intel MB/MBP/iMacs/minis have the Matshita (Panasonic) UJ-857D, which cannot be unlocked or flashed.
The drive will (or SHOULD) read the disc like any other data disc, you just can't play it in Apple DVD Player. VLC, MTR, or anything else that can crack/bypass the encoding will have no problems. Now, most of my experience is with Pioneer DVR drives, so I can't speak for the Matshita UJ-857D, but I've never known any DVD drive that would simply ignore a DVD based on region (none of my friends ever had problems and they have many varying models of drives).
Your PC came with a region locked drive too, if you bought it in the USA. It just was probably already locked to Region 1 and didn't ask you, unlike the drive on your Mac. It's not a disadvantage of the Mac, and there are still ways to bypass it as have been discussed.
Thanks guys for all of your comments.
I will look into the posts and see what I can do. I also intend to take this to Apple. I wont put up with this kind of attitude from a company that I pay thousands of $'s to. If they aren't prepared to sell to me what I want, then I will buy it from someone else.
For the record; I have a Dell desktop that has never given me a problem with region coding. I have bought exercise and coffee making DVD's, from the US that are not available in Australia. I have bought Movies from Asia when I was traveling there; I have DVDs from Australia and I have bought DVDs off the internet that could have any region code on it.
In this day and age we have the Internet and a high level of travel. To apply region coding is wrong. We should not need to be scrambling to seek non propriety workarounds. We dont accept it with household DVD players; Ive never encountered it with PCs and I will be damned if I will submit to Apple restricting me in what DVDs I can play from my collection of multi region disks.
I will look into the posts and see what I can do. I also intend to take this to Apple. I wont put up with this kind of attitude from a company that I pay thousands of $'s to. If they aren't prepared to sell to me what I want, then I will buy it from someone else.
For the record; I have a Dell desktop that has never given me a problem with region coding. I have bought exercise and coffee making DVD's, from the US that are not available in Australia. I have bought Movies from Asia when I was traveling there; I have DVDs from Australia and I have bought DVDs off the internet that could have any region code on it.
In this day and age we have the Internet and a high level of travel. To apply region coding is wrong. We should not need to be scrambling to seek non propriety workarounds. We dont accept it with household DVD players; Ive never encountered it with PCs and I will be damned if I will submit to Apple restricting me in what DVDs I can play from my collection of multi region disks.
Ah, Australia. I think the situation is different there. In the US most everything comes as Region 1 locked (PCs and stand alone DVD players alike), though there are a few that allow you to unlock them (my cheapo Phillips can play all regions). Some DVDs released here actually won't play unless the player is locked to R1 though. 
I would say with certainty there isn't a single consumer that likes region encoding, but I don't think there's much Apple can do about it?
I would say with certainty there isn't a single consumer that likes region encoding, but I don't think there's much Apple can do about it?
Yeah, well it should but it doesn't. VLC won't play any out-of-region disks spouting nonsense about bad headers or some such and MTR will rip but reports errors and the resulting rips are unplayable. The discs are perfect and play fine on unlocked standalone players but the drive refuses to let them play on the Mac. Methinks things have moved on from the old days and drive manufacturers are getting pressured to make more unlockable drives. Hong Kong and Australia both have laws in place saying that it is the consumers right to unlock drives. I wish everyone else had those laws too.
PS Glad you edited the post, much more friendly!
this is absolutely frustrating, i get this a lot with asian movies. the majority of them just aren't available in r1 while the retail disks are r2/3/4/5. if they become huge blockbusters or something, hollywood either remakes them (a la my sassy girl and lake house and infernal affairs) or shows the original in movie theaters, but r1 retail of those movies are impossible to find.
For further information I kindly direct your attention here:
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=34750
Be warned! You won't like what you read.
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=34750
Be warned! You won't like what you read.
I understand the frustration, as I have it myself, but there are reasons for this, and a lot of it has to do with licensing (and actually works to protect independent artists and filmmakers as well as the large firms). The best example I can give is Spaced; Spaced is the Channel Four series that Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, and Jessica Stevenson did a couple years before they started work on Shaun of the Dead (and it is amazing, if you haven't seen it). However, due to how licensing laws work in the UK vs US, the music and creative content used in the series was not cleared for international use; this means that the artists involved in making the content that makes up part of the series are not being compensated properly by the laws of countries other than Britain, so until all those clearances are worked out, Spaced will not be made available in region 1. As a fan of the series, I bought it on DVD, mostly just because I like to support the filmmakers I respect, and I will buy it again when it is released over here...
Yes, it is frustrating. But then as someone who works in music, I don't want my artists to have material that they should be earning money from being given away for free while other people are earning money from it. It's still a very grey area of the arts industry, but the end result is the more lax these restrictions become, the less money that the actual artist makes (for example, taxes that are drawn from blank media are paid out to the major labels, not to independents [in actuality, no matter how the actual tax laws are written]). This is certainly different from mp3s, as most people who download music end up buying the stuff they really like; in this case, the item has been paid for, and most consumers would assume they've done their part to support the artists involved, when really no support has actually made its way to those artists.
There are, of course, several other reasons which are more about the movie industry controlling release dates and the like, but licensing is a part of it, especially in regards to regional programming (not as much with film, as most film licensing deals include global usage ryders). In probably 5-10 years, this won't be an issue, as the dominance of tv on dvd has lead to broader scopes to licensing contracts, but for now this is a big part of the issue, and while it does protect the corporations, it also protects the artists.
All that said, there are ways around it, some of which have been mentioned here. What I suggest is buying a cheap internal (around $15-20 for a DVD-ROM only) or external once you've used up your 5 changes and using it to view or rip dvds. I personally have an office machine set to region 2 and my main set to region 1, which sorts the problem for me...
Sure, I perfectly understand the licensing issues that may arise. My issue, and I'm sure most others', is with the legalized price fixing and product unavailability that we encounter from region locking.
Oh how I wish that Leopard gets rid of this region-coding.
Anyway on http://lowendmac.com/fishkin/06/0623.html it says:
On a Windows PC, going region free is much easier than on a Mac. There are software programs that intercept the DVD before the operating system even sees the region code and tricks it into thinking that it's Region 1 regardless of what it really is. I used one such application on my ThinkPads for years and never had to worry about flashing firmware on drives or resetting region counters on the operating system.
Could it be possible to make the drive region-free under windows? That would take some of us half-way their. We won't get the battery life of Leopard though..
Anyway on http://lowendmac.com/fishkin/06/0623.html it says:
On a Windows PC, going region free is much easier than on a Mac. There are software programs that intercept the DVD before the operating system even sees the region code and tricks it into thinking that it's Region 1 regardless of what it really is. I used one such application on my ThinkPads for years and never had to worry about flashing firmware on drives or resetting region counters on the operating system.
Could it be possible to make the drive region-free under windows? That would take some of us half-way their. We won't get the battery life of Leopard though..
on the pc. Slysoft's AnyDVD unlock/decrypts any region including HD/BluRay. Not nead my MBP now, but its worth to see if it'll let me run AnyDVD under parallels or VM
apfhex, standalone dvd drives (computers) come with no region set. So it will prompt the user.
apfhex, standalone dvd drives (computers) come with no region set. So it will prompt the user.
Buy a Dell.
Seriously.
Nobody told Apple to use drives that come with encrypted firmware FFS.
my guess is Apple don't want to piss off the movies (gready bastards if you ask me) industry cauz they're hoping to get some speed with the movies rentals on iTunes.
Don't forget that Steve has shares in pixar (right?) I'm guessing he wants to sell as many Ratatouille DVDs as he can AND have people see it in the cinema...