Ok, so we are going to move to Belgium for a year in August or so-- we have a mac with a DVD ROM . . . we have heard that DVDs vary in format from place to place, but were hoping to play rental movies on the thing when we got over there. Is this computer drive probably incompatible with European DVDs in general? If so is this a problem that can be solved with software, or is this a no-win scenario?
Thanks.
DVDs (movies) vary by something called “Region Codes”, and each country is assigned a “region code number.” On all DVD players manufactured after a certain year (1998? correct me if I’m wrong), they’re “locked” and will only play a certain region. So if you slap a Region 1 DVD into a drive locked at Region 2, it won’t play.
However, you can either run a firmware hack (you MUST know what you’re doing, or there’s a chance you’ll permanently screw up the drive) to make it run all regions, or purchase a DVD player specifically built to be all-region (or “region-free”), which you can do online.
I’m not sure about Macs, but Win OSes will allow you to change the region a total of five times. Once you’ve changed it five times, that’s it; it’s stuck at whatever the last region change was. In any case, software is not what dictates the drive’s region, so you can’t just download those “all-region hack” programs and expect them to work; some of them do, but you’ll have to get the right one (they’re brand specific) and hope your drive isn’t one of the locked ones.
Hope that helps. ^^
Hmmm. . . there’s a start. Follow up question-- what’s the purpose of region coding? What is it supposed to accomplish? Is it something about pirating in Russia and Taiwan or something? They don’t want me buying Lebanese DVDs?
Region coding allows movie studios to control when and where their movies get distributed.