V-Flyer

My new iMac won't play DVDs!

It's just a few months old and happily played all
my DVDs up until last night, and from various regions.

I got a warning that I could change region one more time before it would be locked, and the iMac asked what region I would like. I selected Region 2, but now as soon as I put in a Region 2 DVD I get a message 'You can change the region one more time...' and then immediately quits.

I have reinstalled Snow Leopard, and in Utilities started the Disk permissions repair thing but the problem is still there.

When I put in a Region 1 DVD it plays normally, as if
it's been set to that region, but why warn me I have one region change left if that is not in fact the case?

Any help appreciated!

Your iMac is still fairly new isn't it?? Trip to the Genius Bar maybe?

I think you'll find that region changing is recorded in the firmware of the drive and not in the OS.

Well I had no idea why it wasn't working so thought it would be worth a go...

Can you hack iMac DVD drives like you can PC ones? Most DVD drives do allow region re-coding by various means (some software based, others by getting hold of hacked DVD firmware files) [:w]

Regards

Yup, you can replace the firmware on a lot of the Mac drives, but not all. Here's the place to check: http://forum.rpc1.org

Thanks for that. It looks a bit complicated to me so will wait till I have net access at home before attempting it.

Most new imac drive can't be hacked! Unfortunately - I have looked into most of them.

I bought a cheap external drive and hacked the Firmware. Works fine.

Paul