mac dvd player region free

[The Monkees]

i would like to make my mac ibook region free. i don't know how to do this. please help!!!

[willrob]

If it's a player that has a flasher avilable for a Mac, then you will need to find a region free firmware. If there is no Mac flasher, you will need to put the drive into a PC, providing there is a region free firmware in the first place. What drive do you have?

[pixeljammedia]

VLC is aregion free DVD player; Region X can reset the number of your region changes. If you plan on flashing your DVD drive. you need to find its model in System Profiler and do a search for a firmware flasher and the region-free firmware for your particular model.

[Tezz04]

The new IMac comes with a Pioneer DVD-R DVR-KO4L

Firmware Revision D441

has any one done one of these and if so how

[willrob]

I don't think there's a region free for that drive. It will, from what I've read, enable iDVD 5.012 to create and burn DL 8G projects.

[sjk]

The new IMac comes with a Pioneer DVD-R DVR-KO4L

Mine's got the MatSHITa UJ-845. It's a pretty safe bet that burner will never have a firmware upgrade.

[willrob]

MCE ssells the K04L with Apple Firmware on it already. I'm not sure how hard it would be to swap the drives.

[alexliz]

Mine's got the MatSHITa UJ-845. It's a pretty safe bet that burner will never have a firmware upgrade.

Erm, how do you know?

[sjk]

From Terminal:

% drutil info
 Vendor   Product           Rev 
 MATSHITA DVD-R   UJ-845    DBN9

   Interconnect: ATAPI
   SupportLevel: Apple Shipping
          Cache: 2048k
       CD-Write: -R, -RW, BUFE, CDText, Test, IndexPts, ISRC
      DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW, BUFE, Test
     Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO

or:

% drutil status
 Vendor   Product           Rev 
 MATSHITA DVD-R   UJ-845    DBN9

           Type: DVD-RW               Name: /dev/disk4
      Cur Write:    4x DVD          Sessions: 0
      Max Write:    4x DVD            Tracks: 0
   Overwritable:  510:46:46         blocks:  2298496 /   4.71GB /   4.38GiB
     Space Free:  510:46:46         blocks:  2298496 /   4.71GB /   4.38GiB
     Space Used:   00:00:00         blocks:        0 /   0.00MB /   0.00MiB
    Writability: appendable, blank, erasable, overwritable
       Media ID: RITEKW04

[The Media ID (if available) is displayed on 10.4.x.]

Alternatively, run System Profiler and select Hardware->Disc Burning (on Tiger) get similar output to "drutil info". Or Hardware->ATA for another style of listing that includes drive and firmware info.

Uhh... maybe you were asking reasons why I speculated there won't be a firmware upgrade for that burner? Because:

• Matshita/Panasonic doesn't seem to release firmware for end users
• It's been years since Apple released any DVD firmware upgrade
• cynikal stopped working on Matshita firmware a few months ago
• Rapid deployment of new, lower-cost burners on the market has factored into more people upgrading burners sooner than waiting and hoping for firmware upgrades for older ones that developers have increasingly less interest in supporting

However, there's been considerable frustration with 8x burning on the UJ-835 so maybe that'll eventually influence Apple into releasing new firmware. I haven't followed (or even looked for) similar issues with the UJ-845. For now I'm satisfied it'll burn my currently preferred 8x TDK DVD-R media (TTG02) at a reported 8x with all apps I've tested.