Converting Powerbook DVD drive to multiregion

Chic0

Chic0

aka Norman Gah
I have a Powerbook 12" G4 with superdrive. At the moment, I can play region 2 (europe) dvds. When I insert other region dvds, I get a message saying that I will only be able to change the region 4 more times. Is there something I can do so I can play any region dvd whenever I want?
 
You'll want to search for the exact name of the drive and the terms 'firmware' and 'mac'. You'll probably find a firmware patch that makes your drive region-free. You'll also need a little tool to set the region preferences back to 'five times', as the counter will still go down. It's all available on the 'net.
 
If you use any firmware etc hacks (they do exist) to set it to region free - if you ever need to take your mac to be repaired, the hack will make any warrranty not valid, so whatever even during warranty time (or apple care time) - you will have to pay.

Also, the firmware hack can simply just not work.

To have the technicians to have a LOOK and not do anything at your laptop costs at least as much as a cheap region free dvd player.

In which country in Europe (??) do you live, ChicO? In UK they sell multi region / world dvd players everywhere - you can start browsing them e.g. at www.amazon.co.uk - the prices start from like 30-40 £ up. In US one of the places to buy them, http://www.dvdoverseas.com - that is where we got ours .. if you watch movies more than very randomly, it will be better not risk your laptop, and just get a _real_ world player.
 
Thanks for the help guys.

heathpitts : I managed to get onto the cynakil site but bit weary about taking a risk and messing up the drive.

Anyway, having the drive multi-region isnt really that important. The only reason I thought about it is cause my multiregion standalone dvd player recently broke, so instead of buying a new player I thought i would just multiregion my powerbook drive and use that. Thing is though I also realised I wouldnt be able to utilise 5.1 Digital output if I did this.

So, i think I will forget about doing this and just buy a cheap dvd player from Amazon. Cheers Giaguara

Thanks for the help everyone... :D
 
Try using VLC (do a search on VersionTracker).
It's not a firmware hack - it's the mac port of the Linux DVD player. It simply reads the DVD as a UDF disk and decrypts it on the fly. The quality isn't quite as good as the Apple DVD player, but it works fine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top