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TMO Quick Tip - Playing Foreign DVD Movies on Your Mac

by , 7:30 AM EDT, August 28th, 2006

Even though we live in a world where you can purchase movies on DVD from other countries, you can't play them on your Mac without changing your optical drive's region encoding. Since you can change the region only five times, you better make sure that imported movie is really worth watching. Unless, that is, you use VLC media player.


Break free from the boundaries of DVD region codes.

VLC media player is an amazing jack-of-all-trades multimedia player that handles a stunning array of media formats without the need for additional codecs. More importantly for today's tip, however, is the fact that it can play DVDs from every encoding region. As an added bonus, it also plays video CDs.

VLC media player is free, and you can download it at the VideoLAN Web site.

Trivia: The movie in the VLC media player screen shot is Tradje vågen, Den (The Third Wave). It's a Swedish blockbuster action-thriller staring Jacob Eklund, Irena Björklund and Richard Froelich.

if you have ideas for Mac related tips that you think other TMO readers might find helpful.

Observer Comments

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Close Name:zalmy Posts: 1 Joined: 28 Aug 2006
Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:52 am Subject: DVD playback

I tried this and it didnt work, can someone explain exactly how to go about this?


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Close Name:Mikuro Posts: 457 Joined: 15 Jun 2002
Mon Aug 28, 2006 9:04 am Subject: Intel Macs

From what I've heard, VLC CANNOT play foreign DVDs on Intel Macs. It Just Works on PPC Macs, but something's different in the new models, and I don't think there's any known way around it.


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Close Name:jcbeckman Posts: 55 Joined: 06 May 2004
Mon Aug 28, 2006 9:16 am Subject:

The drive enters into it. VLC works fine on my PowerMac G5, but doesn't on my PowerBook G4 for foreign disks.

My solution? Get a cheap external drive (I had an old DVD-RAM lying around) and change the region code in that. Yes, if you have a lot of regions, that's not much of an answer, but I only buy Region 2 foreign disks.


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Close Name:Semeyaza Posts: 130 Joined: 29 Aug 2002
Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:17 am Subject: make a backup copy

If you don't want to change regional code on your drive, make a backup copy of the disc with software like OsEx and remove the regional code.

You can than keep the original disc and play the backup on your Mac.

cheers


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Close Name:AndrewWickliffe Posts: 3 Joined: 28 Aug 2006
Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:48 am Subject:

Apple's started using incompatible drives....

An external is the way to go.


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Close Name:Mikuro Posts: 457 Joined: 15 Jun 2002
Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:19 pm Subject: OsEx vs MacTheRipper

Quote
Semeyaza wrote:
If you don't want to change regional code on your drive, make a backup copy of the disc with software like OsEx and remove the regional code.

Are you sure this works on Intel Macs? I've heard that MacTheRipper won't work for the same reasons VLC won't. Is that true, and is OsEx different?


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Close Name:Guest
Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:07 pm Subject: it works

well, it works for me. I can play a DVD that DVD Player said me I had to change regional code. I have a 2ghz macbook intel core 2 duo and VCL 0.8.6...


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