VLC and playing DVDs

[MikeCaine]

I understand from listening to a Mancworld podcast that the programme VLC will allow your Mac to play a DVD from any region without having to change the region code on your Mac.

I use DVDRegionFree on my PCs to do the same thing.

However, when I try to use VLC on my iMac the standard Mac DVD player pops up and asks if I want to change the DVD region in the hardware and when I click cancel it ejects the DVD.

Any ideas how I can bypass this to stop it happening and then play my DVDs through VLC?

Regards

Mike

 

[Ric]

Hi Mike,

funnily enough I am having a similar discussion else where !

The DVD drive on your Mac, gives you 5 goes to set the Region, once this is set then, you can't change it...not unless you want to 'flash' the chips inside the drive which invalidates your warranty. It's all a bit daft really the arguments for hard ware setting the region are a bit rubbish when you can buy a Multi Region Drive from any computer shop !

You will have to set the region in DVD player first, as far as I am aware.

I will have a look into it...

regards

Ric

 

[MikeCaine]

Hi Ric

If you listen to Macworld Podcast #6 which is about 15 minutes long (I found it throught iTunes store rather than the Macworld website) then at 1.45 minutes they mention VLC and how it can be used to bypass region control without having to set the region change in the hardware

I had a go last night and couldn't get anywhere. I might go to thr VLC forum and see if I can figure something from there

Regards

Mike

 

[MikeCaine]

Hmmm, seems like it's unlikely to work on my Macs as they're fairly recent (< 1 year) and Apple changed something in the drives a while back to stop programmes like VLs from bypassing the region settings.

Bit of a bugger that, as I've some software on my PCs that works perfectly

 

[Ric]

Hi

Have you tried using MacTheRipper to 'rip' those DVD's.

I haven't access here at the minute to other Region disks, to see if MTR will still RIP different Regions.

Download link in this thread.

regards

Ric

 

[Ric]

Also...

...go to your System Preferences --> Cd and DVD then change the "When you insert a Video DVD" to ignore, then fire up VLC and see if it plays...

regards

Ric

 

[vjoustra]

Thanks! This trick works perfectly for me. I did had to set my audio output manually in VCL to get the sound as well. (Audio > Audio Device > your preffered device)

 

[Ric]

No problem,

glad it worked.

regards

Ric

 

[bluekatt]

vcl encodes everything via the software the resolutions might be ropey at times
the actual ( ridicilous ) hard ware region settings do not matter to vcl