DVD Drive Malfunctions Suddenly with Different Regions

April 27, 2010 10:16 PM

British DVDs have suddenly stopped playing in my mac mini.

I'm addicted to the show MI-5, known in the UK as Spooks. I'm on Season 7, and all the previous seasons from Netflix have played fine. Now, none of the season 7 discs will play. I've tried ripping them with MactheRipper, and it seems to work, but the Video_TS files won't play. When trying DVDRemaster I get the error message that the disc must be encrypted. I called Netflix to ask what region they were for, and the customer service person didn't answer, just chirpily said she was sending me replacements. Surprise! The replacements don't work. It has to be a region issue. (but all the previous sasons worked!)

I have a mac mini with a Matshita UJ-875S, Firmware Revision 1.

I downloaded the RPC1 update here: http://jzego.posterous.com/matshita-patched-firmware-thread along with the Matshita Flasher, and installed the firmware. It goes without saying that my own DVDs play fine still.

Is there anything I can do about this? Help me feed my British television addiction once again! (Barring a real fix, does anyone know where I can download season 7 of spooks?)

posted by tejolote to technology (7 answers total)

I'm not a techie, and maybe the software you are using operates differently, but I thought that you could only change the region on a Mac's DVD player so many times (4?) and it will end up being "stuck" on the last one you change it to (i.e. the 4th one).
posted by 1000monkeys at 10:28 PM on April 27, 2010

"I thought that you could only change the region on a Mac's DVD player so many times (4?)"

1000 monkeys is exactly correct, except that it may be changed five times, and it's stuck on the region of that fifth time (see the last sentence two paragraphs above "Additional Information").
posted by The Potate at 11:23 PM on April 27, 2010

Try using VLC Media Player - it ignores DVD regions.
posted by dunkadunc at 11:30 PM on April 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

...except on Macs with Matshita drives, unfortunately. But it may work now that the RPC1 reflash has happened.
posted by flabdablet at 12:07 AM on April 28, 2010

Both Season 7 and Season 8 of Spooks are up on the various torrent sites, if you care to search for them. (Season 7 is SO GOOD. You are going to want to watch the last few episodes uninterrupted.)
posted by meerkatty at 7:53 AM on April 28, 2010

It seems really unlikely that Netflix is sending out Region 2 discs, especially if they're branded as MI-5, not Spooks. I thought MactheRipper told you the region of the source disc?
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 8:16 AM on April 28, 2010

I have to agree with Lentrohamsanin... I would be really surprised if Netflix was shipping anything other than Region 1 encoded DVDs. After all, they don't have any customers outside of the United States. Have you tried playing them in a standalone DVD player or game console and seeing what happens?
posted by Nothlit at 9:50 AM on April 28, 2010