I have an apple laptop :) and i would be travling on trips and i love
to watch dvd's on it. Since i travel to europe, american, africa and
asia i would want a player that allows me to play all regions. There
is a greart DVD player that comes with OS X but i can only change the
reigons 5 times, after that i am not allowed to change it.

The best thing would be if i could some how change this so that i am
not limited. If that is not possible i would like a another program
that is multi reigon. I dont mind to pay for that program if its any
good.

Hello Sulafa

It is possible to make your DVD-ROM drive region free but it depends
on the apple laptop you have and whether a patch is available (most of
drives have patches available these days).

There are several sites on the net that include links and information
on how to go about flashing your drive:

http://www.regionfreedvd.net/rom.html
http://xvi.rpc1.org/
http://www.opuscc.com/download/
http://www.opuscc.com/support/dvd/1.shtml
http://www.opuscc.com/download/toolkit.shtml
http://wormintheapple.gr/macdvd/faq.html
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Boardroom/7657/mac/mac.htm
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewforum.php?f=30
http://xvi.rpc1.org/region.html
http://www.wormintheapple.gr/macdvd/download.html

The best two links for starting this I believe are these:
http://www.macos.utah.edu/Documentation/DVDRegionFree/RegionFree_Utilities.html
http://www.powerbook-fr.com/dossiers/dezonage/index.html

It should be noted that by doing this you are probably breaking any
guarantee you have on your DVD-ROM drive, but then you will be able to
watch movies when you travel around!

Another option available to you is to "vendor reset" your DVD drive
each time it becomes locked.  There is some software at the last
wormintheapple.gr link above for doing this.

I hope this information is sufficient for you, if not please ask for
clarification and supply the make of your DVD-ROM drive and the type
of Apple laptop you have and I will try to track down the specific
information you need.

Good luck and happy movie watching!

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Request for Answer Clarification by sulafa-ga on 29 Jul 2004 11:48 PDT

Thanks for the answer.

I would be testing this befor i rate it, i talked to my friend who has
3 diffrent DVD's from diffrent regions as soon as i test it i would
submit a rating.

thanks again.

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Clarification of Answer by palitoy-ga on 29 Jul 2004 12:06 PDT

Did you find the make of your DVD drive and a was a patch available? 
This is really the determining factor as to whether this works or not.

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Request for Answer Clarification by sulafa-ga on 30 Jul 2004 03:50 PDT

I have an iBook with a superdrive (CDRW DVD/R) with panther installed
version 10.3.4.

My Operating system is up-to-date, i am not sure about the dvd drives
make, i tryed to find out but could not. Here is what apple says on
it:

"SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW):
Apple's revolutionary SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW) allows you to create
music and data CDs, read DVDs, and create DVD-video discs for playback
on most standard DVD players. Along with Apple's iDVD software
(included with iLife '04 digital lifestyle suite) your iBook becomes a
full-featured DVD authoring studio. The SuperDrive reads DVDs at 8x,
writes to DVD-R at 4x, reads CDs at 24x, writes to CD-R at 16x, and
writes to CD-RW at 8x. The drive supports CD-ROM, CD-Audio, CD-R,
CD-RW, CD-I, Mixed Mode CD, Photo CD, Video CD, Enhanced CD,
DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, and DVD-R media."

I think its sont but i am not sure.

I would need step by step help, i only need 1 working method.

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Clarification of Answer by palitoy-ga on 30 Jul 2004 05:04 PDT

Hi Sulafa

I think your best plan of action would be to download the DVDinfo
program that is available here:
http://www.wormintheapple.gr/macdvd/download.html

This will give you this information:

· Drive Location 
· Drive Manufacturer
· Drive Model
· Firmware Version
· Serial Number (if available) 
· RPC Type
· Drive State 
· Number of Remaining "Vendor Resets"
· Number of Remaining Region Switches
· Current Region Setting

This data tells you the most important things before proceeding -
namely the manufacturer, model and firmware version.  It also tells
you the number of remaining resets you are allowed before the drive
becomes locked.  Before you do anything about flashing your DVD drive
you must know this information as if you use the wrong file you could
potentially ruin your drive.

I would also recommend looking at RegionX which allows you to easily
switch region which can be downloaded from here:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/firmware/utilities.htm

---

Request for Answer Clarification by sulafa-ga on 30 Jul 2004 06:47 PDT

This is the information i got. I dont want to download something by
mistake so can you direct me to one.


 Vendor: MATSHITA
   Model: DVD-R   UJ-825
Firmware: DAM5
          RPC-2 (region locked)
          State is SET
          4 vendor resets left
          4 region changes left
          Region 1


I dont mind paying for software that will work on my mac.

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Clarification of Answer by palitoy-ga on 30 Jul 2004 07:32 PDT

Great!  This is the information that we need.

I have done some searching on the net and it appears that the
region-free firmware for this DVD drive is not yet available:

http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?p=123983
://www.google.com/search?q=uj-825+%22region+free%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&q=uj-825+firmware+download

When it does become available you should be able to download it from
this site (simply search for UJ-825):
http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_search.php

Until it does become available you will not unfortunately be able to
alter your drive to be region-free.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by sulafa-ga on 31 Jul 2004 04:55 PDT

I am travling soon :( is there software or even hardware that i can
use (hard ware has to be extra small to carry around).

---

Clarification of Answer by palitoy-ga on 31 Jul 2004 05:25 PDT

Unfortunately there isn't - the only thing I can think of is to make
back-up copies of the DVD's on your hard drive (and to make them
region-free).  On a PC this can be done with a program called DVD
Shrink but I would have to investigate similar options for a Mac.  The
legalities of doing this also is dependent on where you live.

The main problem is that your DVD-drive is too new and no-one has yet
managed to bypass the region protection on your drive.  As you can see
from the http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_search.php page you are unlucky as
most other DVD drives can be made region free.  Another possibility
would be to buy a region free portable DVD player to attach to your
laptop.

If you keep checking back at the search page mentioned above and the
firmware does become available, please ask for clarification on this
question again and I will talk you through the steps you need to take.

The only option I can see here is to use the DVD Reset program that
can be downloaded from here:
http://www.wormintheapple.gr/macdvd/download.html

"DVDReset is a utility that allows you to issue a vendor reset your
region-locked (RPC-2) ATAPI drives. The vendor reset will reset your
drive?s settings to factory default of ?Region not set? and ?5 changes
left?. This software allows you to issue an undocumented and
unsupported command to your DVD drive. If anything goes wrong, you may
end up with a damaged drive, and you must have it replaced. Use it
only as last resort."

I have not personally used this program so I would advise caution in
its use as it indicates above.  Basically all this program does is
reset the number of tries you have before the region code becomes
final.

Very good work.