# DVD region codes x 5?



## Giaguara (Mar 27, 2003)

Why this error message? I thought the DVDs would have finally resolved the film US / Europe incompatibility. But trying to see whether I could see e.g. US or Canadian or European films - others than the default (AFAIK by the country the Mac was bought in, not by e.g. the system language etc) - I get this message.







So, I can watch about 3 american and 2 Canadian or European movies and then what? Resinstall the OS?

Is this all only because the DVDs and videos (and music) costs so much more in Europe ... to prevent the Europeans from buying the US films or why?


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## lurk (Mar 27, 2003)

Nope then your drive stays locked that way for ever.  Os reinstall will not help.

The man liked the limited flow of information our incompatible formats provided so they built it into the standard for DVDs.  Then made it illegal to circumvent it.

Just thinking about it pisses me off :angry:

-Eric

P.S. That is why all of my non-NTSC stuff is on VHS my VCR converts everything but SECAM to a watchable format.  However it is even technically illegal since it accidentally removes Macrovision.  (That is illegal to manufacture and sell I can own it just fine  since it was grandfatherd in )


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## brianleahy (Mar 27, 2003)

It's not a compatability issue -- it's a deliberate lockout feature, which the movie industry insisted on.

As you can read at http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.10

"Motion picture studios want to control the home release of movies in different countries because theater releases aren't simultaneous (a movie may come out on video in the U.S. when it's just hitting screens in Europe). Also, studios sell distribution rights to different foreign distributors and would like to guarantee an exclusive market. Therefore they required that the DVD standard include codes that can be used to prevent playback of certain discs in certain geographical regions. Each player is given a code for the region in which it's sold. The player will refuse to play discs that are not coded for its region. This means that a disc bought in one country may not play on a player bought in another country. Some people believe that region codes are an illegal restraint of trade, but there have been no legal cases to establish this.......


....There are 8 regions (also called "locales"). Players and discs are often identified by the region number superimposed on a world globe. If a disc plays in more than one region it will have more than one number on the globe.
1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories
2: Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)
3: Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
4: Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
5: Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
6: China
7: Reserved
8: Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)
(See the map at <www.unik.no/~robert/hifi/dvd/world.html>.)"


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## Giaguara (Mar 27, 2003)

This thing sucks


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## Arden (Mar 27, 2003)

It's basically a way that the entertainment industry is once again screwing its consumers in the @$$ and laughing at their misery.


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## lurk (Mar 27, 2003)

Just on a technical note the way the keep it locked is that they basically use little fuses that are blown in the process of changing the region code.  So five blocks of fuses equals five changes.  If one had the right chips and knowledge you could probably replace the chip but that would cost more and take more effort than just buying a second DVD drive.

Here is a question does anybody know if I have two DVD drives in a PowerMac will it let me have them in different regons?

Just a thought.
-Eric


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## brianleahy (Mar 27, 2003)

You beat me to the punch.

I have a superdrive set to region 1, 4 changes to go. 

When I added an external firewire DVD+RW drive, and tried inserting a DVD movie, I was once again asked which region I wanted to use.

So that's one approach to having more than 4 changes, albeit an expensive one...


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## tonbo (Mar 27, 2003)

So if I play 100 region 1 DVDs in the player, then 4 region 6 DVDs, that means the drive will now be permanently locked on Region 6? Or do I still have three disparate regions to go? And then it is locked on the last region played?

What if my little brother sneaked in and played all his multi-regional DVDs and I come in to find the drive locked on Region 3?

I smell Class Action suit . . . anyone in? (Anyway, someone has got to be working on a hack for this. It's the most absurd thing I've heard of in a long time.)

Is this a software thing (OS X) or a hardware thing (Apple's latest computers with DVD drives)?

What if there is NO REGION encoding, such as the DVD Video I burned this afternoon? I, the author, did not specify a region--but it wants one anyway?

I already know the answer, because I got the same message to select a region. In other words, one option gone, four to go.

grrr.


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## lurk (Mar 27, 2003)

It is the number of change you make that are limited. You could swap between 1 and 2 several times and burn up all your changes.  

This is done in hardware.  The region is encoded with a type of fuse where changing the region requires this fuse to be blown.  You cannot change it once you have burned up these chances.  It is very similar to the way a PROM is burned.

As for class action good luck it ain't gonna happen.  As consumers we missed the boat and the manufacturers and "content providers" lobbied for the laws they wanted to enforce this and got them.  IT is all perfectly legal and if you try to do anything about it you will be put in jail.  Gotta love the DMCA! 

As the author you can create a region free DVD.  You used to even be able to find them commercially in the olden days.

-Eric


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## tonbo (Mar 27, 2003)

"As the author you can create a region free DVD."

That's weird, because after I burned the disc, ejected it and then put it back in, I got the "What region is this disc?" message--on a so-called region-free disc.

Selecting Region 1, I had to burn one of my "chances" just to play my own disc.


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## Giaguara (Mar 27, 2003)

This region thing in the DVDs feels as bad or even worse than the music copy "protecting" as the simple marker pen line is not going to solve it. I see only few alternatives:

- Buying non-region coded DVDs when ever this is possible - and even paying more for them.

- Not guying DVDs at all.

So I am forced to see the DVDs in an other than my Mac or I'll loose the change to see any European / whatever moveis with it. This thing was not said or written anywhere visibly when I got the Mac - and I am 200 % sure this is an issue also with PCs - but still - it is not fair. I can not buy the DVD where I want and watch it with my Mac. 

 

So, I consider applying the "not buying any DVDs at all" to resolve this issue.


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## Arden (Mar 27, 2003)

Does this affect my iMac (see sig)?  I haven't had anything like this, but I did get it used and I don't know if the previous owners had to set it or anything.


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## Ugg (Mar 28, 2003)

I found this in the Apple Help directory, if the previous owner of your mac played DVDs, chances are good that they were from the US/Canada region.  

"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.

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."


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## lurk (Mar 28, 2003)

> _Originally posted by tonbo _
> *"As the author you can create a region free DVD."
> 
> That's weird, because after I burned the disc, ejected it and then put it back in, I got the "What region is this disc?" message--on a so-called region-free disc.
> ...



Actually you burned two because you will need to switch it back   But if it asked you what region it was why didn't you just say it was region 2 or whatever region you are in?

I don't have a DVD burner to use with iDVD but there has to be a setting for what region to burn to if any.  Make sure that you have that configured properly since you must be able to burn in your own region.  That alternative is just too asinine to consider.  

Remember once you switch back to your home region to never ever change it again.   God forbid you get stuck with only being able to play DVDs from Tuvalu...

-Eric

Disclaimer: I have never seen any movies from the great land of Tuvalu.  I am sure that they have a rich and wonderful cinematic tradition which unfortunately, due to DVD region codes, is not open to me. Tuvalushin movies should be region free!


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## brianleahy (Mar 28, 2003)

iDVD works only with an Apple Superdrive, so perhaps it automatically burns discs with whatever region code you've set your superdrive to.    Maybe.  Obviously region-free would be preferable.

Tonbo -  the limit is on the number of times you change your region code to a different number -- the number of discs played between changes has no effect.    

Actually, I'm a little surprised they let you change it as many times as you can - I would have expected them to pre-burn the region code in according to where the Mac is sold.

Anyway, notice also that you need the administrator password to change the region code, so if you're worried that your little brother will use up all your changes, just don't tell him the password....

I read last year about an Apex DVD player which - at least for the first few months it was available - had a hidden menu screen that would let you change the region code at will.  The company said it was a mistake, and subsequent models didn't have it.


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## Snowball (Mar 28, 2003)

Actually, fuses aren't blown at all - the changes you make ARE in fact reversable, but how easy it is depends on the DVD drive you have. You can actually change your DVD drive's firmware to ignore regions, but I might get in trouble for providing links. Just do a search for "mac dvd region free firmware" or something like that and you'll find out what you need to know, or try PMing me.


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## lurk (Mar 28, 2003)

Actually the "fuses" are blown in any modern DVD drive or consumer unit.  It is a requirement for licensing the DVD technology that getting more than x number of region changes must be "impossible" and if you do not play by the rules you can't make DVD stuff.  

In the old days you could get units like the first generation DVD drives from Creative where the region was actually all handled in software and there were software hacks what would allow these units to have their region reset infinitely.  For that matter the original Sony consumer DVDs just had a little switch inside you could flip to make the unit region free.  

Since consumers were smart enough to figure out how to use a screwdrive to open the box and flip the switch these approached did not meet the definition of "impossible" and the manufacturers had to come up with new techniques.  Now the little "fuses" technique is the solution which manufactures have come up with which meets the definition of "impossible" for the time being but as you mention firmware hacks exist to get around these but they really are not doing what you expect them to be.  

Firmware hacks are usually done by patching the code in a number of ways depending on the way the fuse scheme is implemented in hardware. This is done by things like always returning a given region without actually checking or modifying the function which checks  "Are you region x" to always answering yes.

In that latter case DVD media manufactures are changing the way the disk checks the region in the drive rather than asking "Are you a region 1 player?"  It asks "Are you a region 2 player?" "Region 3?"  for everything but region 1  And then if it gets an inappropriate answer refuses to play.  This is the way that many "chips" and firmware hacks work so you will find that they play older media fine but won't play new stuff at all.

In the former case where it is possible to bypass the the fuse count in firmware the definition of "impossible" is no longer being met and manufacturers are changing things appropriately.  For instance some are adding a fuse counter to the firmware upgrading process.  This means that approaches that relied on changing the firmware to change regions will no longer work - you will just hit the firmware reset limit.  Another approach is to a little bit fancier array of fuses which both encode the region in a layered way.  Each layer has four fuses where three fuses encode the region and the fourth marks wether the bank is "alive".  When a region is set it kills the bank in front of it and encodes the region in the next live bank.  Reading the region code is then not handled in software or firmware since only the signals from the first live bank can be read from the hardware.  Finally, dedicated data paths can be added if necessary to defend against returning false values.

Now before you get mad at Apple for this there is nothing that they can do about it.  The DVD technology is pantented and must be licensed by any manufacturer for the products they sell.  This is not enforced by national law but contract law and that is part of the reason the definition of "impossible" is fluid and manufactures are putting so much effort into this.  Beleave me they do not want to because of the complexity it adds to their products as well as the customer relations nightmare it causes.  

Imagine if you have one of the finite firmware reloading drives and they have to release several patches over time.  "Sorry, you have updated the firmware too many times on your drive and cannot apply Real Important Patch #42.  Please continue to buy products in the future."

Now if you want to get upset about a national law in this situation the DMCA and its European brethren say that it is illegal for you as a consumer to try to do anything to fix the situation.

(Ouch my tinfoil hat is pinching)
-Eric

Edited to fix an unclear "them".


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## Giaguara (Mar 28, 2003)

Wow Lurk. You know a lot about this.  

I am kind of forced to use _TWO_ DVD players as one works for the European codings, and if I want to see US coded movies I'll screw the iBook ..  

Best alternative maybe: not buying DVDs at all .. the passive force


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## lurk (Mar 28, 2003)

I am in a mixed marrage (US/European ) and am raising my kids bilingually. It is a serious task getting anything here in the US that is not in English.  I have been through this DVD mess forward and backward lots of times and finally settled on good old VHS.  My VCR cost $350 dollars but it converts from and to anything save the SECAM they use in France.  Since I don't speak French that didn't seem like a big loss 

-Eric


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## Arden (Mar 28, 2003)

> _Originally posted by lurk _
> *Tuvalushin movies should be region free!*


Good Lord, *ALL* movies should be region free!  This is friggin' ridiculous!


> _Originally posted by Giaguara_
> *If I want to see US coded movies I'll screw the iBook ..*


Um, I'm not even going to ask.


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## brianleahy (Mar 28, 2003)

Lurk, more than half my Region-1 DVDs have extra audio tracks in Spanish or French or both.  I don't know what language you need, but those are certainly "not in English".   

Are you seeking DVDs that actually have NO English soundtrack at all?  Do you need another language?  Italian? German? Polish?


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## Giaguara (Mar 28, 2003)

I think he wants Finnish 

Vai mitã?


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## lurk (Mar 28, 2003)

Finnish actually.  It is basically never an option and I am really most interested in kids stuff... well not me but my kids are  

For instance Disney releases DVDs in Finland with both Finnish and the original English tracks but I cannot get those here in the states.  I would love to and I would even pay more for them but it is not an option.  

-Eric


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## lurk (Mar 28, 2003)

Gia beat me to it  

That'll teach me to start composing a reply and then get distracted midway through


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## Giaguara (Mar 28, 2003)

Ask the people who travel to Europe to bring or send those to you. I could probably pass in there in April or July .. maybe, who knows. If I knew what you'd like I could bring .. 

Or where are you in the States? Maybe there could be some minor language or emigrants clubs that could help or organize ordering bigger movie or music orders from other countries ... at least in the bigger cities. (So far all my movies are in Italian / Spanish or English / Japanese / French ...)


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## brianleahy (Mar 28, 2003)

Hmp!  That is a rare one (in the US, I mean).

You can look here:
http://us.imdb.com/Sections/DVDs/Subtitles/Finnish/

For DVDs that supposedly have Finnish subtitles.  Strangely, there does not seem to be a comparable search for soundtracks...


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## Snowball (Mar 28, 2003)

I didn't know that firmware got around the fuse system, but I still doubt it will be possible for the drive manufacturers to stop firmware uploading since it has real-world use. What if a dealer actually had to reset a drive? How will the drive know the difference between resetted firmware and hacked firmware? (I'm no DVD-guru, so please tell me if it is still possible.)
Anyway, in the meantime, since Giaguara (a mod) hasn't forbidden me posting a link, here's one about DVD firmware: (It's NOT illegal unless you use the revised firmware to pirate movies.)
http://www.opuscc.com/support/dvd/1.shtml


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## Giaguara (Mar 28, 2003)

Snowball I think it's worse seeing pirated movies. If I have original DVDs I want to see them on my Mac without having 2 DVD players for 2 regions. I think this DVD stupidity should be more visible for those buying DVD players / Macs etc. ~ I guess most users use only one region coded DVDs though - as I had seen so far nothing about the issue on the boards ever.  (damn, that DVD firmware needs classic .. ).


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## Arden (Mar 29, 2003)

This whole thing is ludicrous.  We the consumers, acting under our rights as buyers of durable goods like DVD's, should have the right to play any disc, of any type, on any supported drive, as many times as we want, as long as we are viewing or listening to a medium legally purchased within our local jurisdictions.  Just because some people perform sublegal (not necessarily illegal) actions does not mean the recording industry or the movie industry have the right to dictate what we can watch, _on_ what we can watch, and how often we can watch it.


> _Originally posted by lurk_
> *Now if you want to get upset about a national law in this situation the DMCA and its European brethren say that it is illegal for you as a consumer to try to do anything to fix the situation.*


This is simply absurd.  What gives the DMCA the right to arrest us for voicing our opinions on something we pay them for?  If I ever run into problems related to this, I am going to fight as much as I can.

This whole situation just goes to show some of the fallacies of capitalism.


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## Giaguara (Mar 29, 2003)

Yep, it is ridiculous.

Happy birthday, Arden!


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## chevy (Mar 29, 2003)

One of the reason they impose it in Switzerland is to protect "official" imports.


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## tonbo (Mar 29, 2003)

Well, it all comes down to whether you really even want to watch a DVD on a computer, when you can get an all-region player for around $200 and watch it in the comfort of your living room. I'll take that over watching a jaggy image on a small computer screen any day.


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## tonbo (Mar 29, 2003)

Snowball, thanks for the link, but for us suckers who have no choice but to boot into OS X, it doesn't help much  =)


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## Giaguara (Mar 29, 2003)

> _Originally posted by tonbo _
> *Well, it all comes down to whether you really even want to watch a DVD on a computer, when you can get an all-region player for around $200 and watch it in the comfort of your living room. I'll take that over watching a jaggy image on a small computer screen any day. *



I don't want a separate DVD or CD player. I want to be mobile SO I want to use my Mac...


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## Arden (Mar 29, 2003)

Yeah, a DVD player is for sitting at home and watching a movie, preferrably with others close to you, some tasty treats, and a kick-ass surround sound system, while DVD on the computer is for watching movies on the go with a laptop or simply watching a movie on your computer.  (It's good for watching stuff late at night when everyone else's in bed.)


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## tonbo (Mar 29, 2003)

Well, Arden. Well! Just stay away from trash-talkin' women and shady men with Dells.


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## Arden (Mar 31, 2003)

G: Where exactly are you?  I don't think I've ever been able to decipher it (or maybe I'm not paying enough attention... ).


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## ex2bot (Mar 31, 2003)

Moved from Mac OS X System & Misc. Software. . .


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## dlloyd (Apr 1, 2003)

> _Originally posted by arden _
> *G: Where exactly are you?  I don't think I've ever been able to decipher it (or maybe I'm not paying enough attention... ). *



Forgeddaboutit! 
Unless you get some private IM with G., you ain't going to find out. The few of us here who know can't tell you, she'll edit our posts. (Darned Super-mod!  She'll probably edit this one anyway )

--_Yea, right... G._ -


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## lurk (Apr 1, 2003)

Sorry for the delay in getting back to this thread  I have been real busy and not able to check in 

*Gia:* Thanks for the offer to help with the importing situation but I have that covered (Grandparents are a good thing ).  I also choose to take the VCR road several years ago for the kids' stuff so that I would not have to deal with the region junk.

*Tonbo:* That depends on where you live.  All region free players are just traditional players that have had some of the chips replaced after the fact.  Now in Australia that is an option, in the US it is a felony, and in Europe things are moving /have moved to the felony situation.  

Also be very careful about what you are getting since some of the "eBay imports" are really a scam.  They sell region free DVD players which are just DVD players set to region 0 (no region) and they can only play non-region locked disks.  Those are legal in the US although not terribly useful.

*snowball:* If it is the firmware that checks the fuse situation then a firmware hack can circumvent it.  Not all systems use that approach so it doesn't always work.  I agree with you that limiting the number of times the firmware can be flashed is not a good option from a business perspective.  The problem is that this is a process driven by lawyers, if it becomes too easy to flash the firmware to circumvent region codes then the company opens themselves up to a lawsuit from the DVD consortium.  Placing a lock on the number of time the firmware can be upgraded is a valid stopgap approach to save a product line which would otherwise have to be discontinued for contractual reasons.

*arden:* The DMCA doesn't say that you cannot complain about the situation, it just says you cannot do anything about it.  As a parallel lets assume that you lost the key to the padlock on your luggage.  With the digital equivalent you cannot try to pick the lock, I cannot pick the lock for you, I cannot tell you how to go about picking the lock, you cannot take a flashlight and try to peek inside the lock to figure out how to pick it, you cannot legally cut the lock off.

In the interest of protecting your freedom though you can compain as much as you want. 

Must... stop... ranting...

Have fun all!
-Eric


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## Arden (Apr 1, 2003)

No, keep ranting! 

So I'm just supposed to go around with my shirts stuck in my DVD player?

Lobbying is sh*t.


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## Ugg (Apr 1, 2003)

That poor kid in Norway is being put on the stand again for copying a DVD that he legally purchased.  It was proved in court the first time around that he didn't intend to share it, he only wanted to copy it for his own use.  Cnet has a story here 

Obviously the fair use argument now only applies to printed books.  I wonder just how far this is going to go and what the outcome of this insane mess is going to be.


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## magpie (Apr 1, 2003)

Not sure if this will help anyone. I cant play dvd's on my powerbook g3 400 (lombard) which is apparently RPC-1 (or region free for those of use:ie me: who dont know what that means)

http://www.wormintheapple.gr/macdvd/download2.html

It's no help to me, but may help you guys


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## doemel (Apr 2, 2003)

I don't really need to repeat here that the whole region code issue is a bad joke. Here's my personal story: I have been travelling back and forth between Switzerland and Canada in the last few years and consequently bought DVDs on both sides of the Atlantic. I bought a Titanium PB recently and one would assume that a mobile computer was intended to travel with its owner. And that the owner would have the convenience of watching DVDs wherever he/she goes. Since that is unfortunately not the case I am practically forced to flash my drive's firmware if I don't want to keep two computers just for the sake of watching movies.
So, everybody with a PowerBook featuring a Matshita CW-8121: The hacked firmware available on several sites works perfectly well, I have already successfully hacked my PB and my two brothers' PBs, all of them have a CW-8121. Just read the instructions carefully! I have hacked a couple of drives for my friends but I don't exactly remember which ones.


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## tonbo (Apr 2, 2003)

Sorry to hijack the thread a bit, but barring buying an all-region DVD player on eBay--I read somewhere that these things weren't really all region but just had their region set to zero--and that all-region players are illegal in the U.S. anyway--do the players at http://www.jlist.com/cgi-bin/shop.cgi?ss=dvd+player&function=search&rating=R seem to be genuine all-region players?

Or are they just "too good to be true?"


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## Giaguara (Apr 2, 2003)

I want one


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## ksv (Apr 3, 2003)

Gia, I think there's a zone free patch for your drive here:
http://www.opuscc.com/download/powerbook.shtml#iBook

Just be sure to find the right patch and read all instructions before installing it. And please don't blame me if anything goes wrong


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## Matsaki (Jul 13, 2004)

Is there really no fix for this yet after a year since the last post? I understand the fuse thing and that they can't be fixed, BUT there must be a way of a sofware solution foling the hardware of the DVD region?

Damn the guy that came up with the DVD regions  Imagine music CD's coming in regions as well...


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## ksv (Jul 13, 2004)

Matsaki said:
			
		

> Is there really no fix for this yet after a year since the last post? I understand the fuse thing and that they can't be fixed, BUT there must be a way of a sofware solution foling the hardware of the DVD region?
> 
> Damn the guy that came up with the DVD regions  Imagine music CD's coming in regions as well...



Check the link I posted, well, a year ago


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## Matsaki (Jul 13, 2004)

Ohh thanks ksv,
But I was not very clear in my post. I also found that the firmaware can be reset on some models. But I did not find anything for my *NEC ND-2500 DVD+-R/RW 8x* allthough it's a very popular DVD writer this days


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