How to tell if DVD will play in my macbook?

May 12, 2009 9:24 PM

"this dvd for non-modified region 1 players only". Being a techno-dunce, I've recently found out that my macbook won't play these types of restricted dvds. Is there a way to determine in advance which dvds are and are not restricted in this way?

Importantly, are all Netflix dvds encoded as such? I'm sure this has been asked before on here, but I couldn't find specific info.

for the record, I'm not interested in making my mac region-free; I don't trust myself with doing anything that may void any chance of a warranty I have.

posted by Think_Long to technology (14 comments total)

Just play them with VLC.
posted by limon at 9:28 PM on May 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

Almost all commercial DVDs are region coded. You'll have to look for DVDs for your region, the region (if any) should be listed on the product page.

Netflix only rents region 1 DVDs.
posted by wongcorgi at 9:31 PM on May 12

Seconding VLC. However, barring that, you can use this....
posted by crazyray at 9:33 PM on May 12

What region are you in? You could always simply change your Macbook to Region 1.
posted by crazyray at 9:38 PM on May 12

wongcorgi, crazyray, the bit about unmodified players is almost certainly a reference to "Region Code Enhanced" which attempts to defeat region-free/multiregion players.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:48 PM on May 12

Thirding VLC. It'll play anything, including weirdly-regioned DVDs. Free, and easy as hell.
posted by raygan at 10:02 PM on May 12

You might want to consider using an external DVD mechanism from a less supine vendor.
posted by flabdablet at 10:03 PM on May 12

What region are you in? You could always simply change your Macbook to Region 1.

Almost all DVD readers have a highly limited number of times you can change the region - 5 is the norm. It's at the firmware level in the drive, so continually changing the region is unlikely to be an option.

VLC is, indeed, the right tool for the job.
posted by rodgerd at 12:16 AM on May 13

* I put on xprc1 firmware on my drive, if there is one for your drive, to make it region free.
* VLC can play without region hassles on most DVD drives, but not some.
* Fairmount can also mount disks without region hassles on most.

To see the region of a DVD, check the back of the case.
DVD cover
Which in this case, shows Region 1. (The world globe with a 1 over it).
posted by lundman at 12:40 AM on May 13

Watch out with using VLC - yes, it will play any region DVDs, but some DVD drives are not themselves 'rpc-1' or region free, and you can only change the region a limited number of times.

You can get around this by reflashing the firmware of your drive, but this is warranty-voiding, can permanently lock the drive if done wrong and is a wee bit technical.

That said, I reflashed my drive after unwittingly changing the playable region too many times, and now it plays DVDs from anywhere.

If you want to reflash your drive, this page has a GUI based way to do it, but only works with a specific version of OS X Tiger. I used this command line utility, which was very quick and simple and worked a treat.
posted by Happy Dave at 3:52 AM on May 13

Another alternative is to just rip the DVD with Mac The Ripper and play the resulting TS_VIDEO image directly with DVD Player.
posted by toroi at 4:03 AM on May 13

VLC does not change region codes, in software or on the drive. It reads the DVDs raw, and decrypts the CSS in software by breaking the keys. The problem is only if you have a drive that does not let you read the disk raw unless you authorise. I believe some matsushita drives stop this etc.

If VLC works for you, you don't need to worry.
posted by lundman at 4:27 AM on May 13

I'll give vlc a shot. it's not a region problem per se (the mac is set as region 1). The player plays other region 1 dvds just fine but it is this specific type of dvd that won't play on a "modified" player. I'm wondering if there is a way to tell in advance if a dvd has this security feature.

thanks all
posted by Think_Long at 6:39 AM on May 13

Just chiming in to repeat what others have said: I'm 99% confident you'll find success with VLC, but if you don't, rip with Mac the Ripper and play with either DVD Player or VLC. Anything else is more work than is worth doing.
posted by SpiffyRob at 9:22 AM on May 13