I found this but haven't tried it so use at your own risk(!). Most new Macbooks have Matsushita SuperDrives installed. The drive is what holds the region lock, so you need to fix that through a firmware upgrade (not really as difficult as it sounds, your Mac does it through automatic updates all the time, the process below is all drag & drop). Follow these steps. 1) go to Applications --> Utilities --> System Profiler 2) click on "Disk Burning" under the Hardware grouping, this will display info about your drive. 3) see what kind of drive you have at the top; visit this site and do a search for that drive type http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php 3a) If your drive is a Matsushita UJ-868 or UJ-857E you're in super luck, just go here http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?f... 3b) read the whole page, and then download the Matsushita Flasher, as well as the firmware for your drive type (don't worry that it doesn't match the Firmware listed for your drive under the System Profiler/Disk Burning tab, you're installing the new firmware; Also, don't worry if the firmware matches what you already have, you'll be downloading the RPC-1 firmware, you likely have RPC-2 firmware right now. All that's important to know is that RPC-1 = region free capable, and RPC-2 = region locked = bad!!!) 3c) if you want to be sure what type of drive you have before you begin, I suggest downloading something called "DVD Info X" (google and you'll find it). this will tell you the type of drive you have and if it's RPC-1 or RPC-2 3d) open the Matsushita Flasher utility and follow the instructions, drag and drop the new firmware you just downloaded into the folder it asks you to. Restart the Mac and off you go.
4) for other drives, and for newer macbooks there really aren't many. You'll have a mixed bag of results. The older the drive the easier it is. But if you cant find it at http://forum.rpc1.org/ then, in my experience, you probably won't find it at all, or it won't be a good fix. Rob ----------------- Rob Beattie Freelance writer and book author www.robbeattie.com 07769 902820 On 18 April 2010 07:52, Ranulph Glanville <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear All, > > I installed the latest version of VLP (1.0.5) and hoped to play a dvd during > a prolonged stopover in Europe. The images on 2 discs came over as blocky and > in wonderful colours, and totally illegible: the sort of thing that I find > when I have some protected video and try to play it. The dvds were new and > fairly ordinary: Kite Runners, for instance. > > I have not used the apple dvd player. I did once insert a dvd and the apple > player came up, so I quit without setting a country code. I gathered from > this list, years ago, that VLP would not call for a country code. It seems I > am somehow confused. Anyhow, my dvds won't play and I'm stuck under the cloud. > > Any ideas? I could use the apple dvd player, but then I'd have to localise > with a country code, I think, and I do dislike that. > > I've not seen any action on the list for a couple of days. I hope I didn't > miss anything. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Sussex Mac User Group" group. > To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/smug?hl=en-GB. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/smug?hl=en-GB.
