i feel like such a hacker
Posted on | May 29, 2008 | No Comments
i have recently gotten around to wanting to play a dvd on my shiny new macbook.
i inserted the dvd and got a smarmy little message informing me that the dvd player in the mac is region-protected and if i want to play my foreign dvds (they didn’t actually say foreign muck, but it was implied, electronially) then i’ll have to change the region setting.
and o, BY THE WAY, dear new mac-owner, you only have five changes TOTAL in hand and then it will stay permanently on the final choice.
so of course, in utter disbelief at this archaic village thinking coming from an huge global company like apple…APPLE for heavensakes!….i went a-googling.
and yes, it seems that i am sadly far from alone in my impotent rage in the face of the region-setting controllers at apple!
lots of dodgy hacks were suggested on various fora and blogs.
dubious firmware that may or may not work….and may wipe out your computer completely….and then you’ll be whistling for your warranty.
lots of people screaming in favour of pirated dvs (the mac dvd player doesn’t detect regions on pirated material….it’s a real double message they are sending to impressionable youth everywhere, but not me of course).
finally, i found one clear-thinking character who suggested living with the miniscule inconvenience and hooking up an external drive and setting it to one region and setting the included internal drive to another region and just learn to live with it and love it.
after a few more hours of reading, i decided this was wise counsel, so i duly attached the el-cheapo-no-brand-you-ever-heard-of dvd drive i bought in hong kong earlier this year and VOILA as they say.
it still gives me a savage little ERROR message when it starts up in either drive, but i just click over that and it snorts irritably and then plays normally.
now, while i was in the modd for such things, i also decided i simply must see if there was a hack for our regular dvd player….set permanently to the local region (4).
i googled region free dvd, plus the mae and model number, and hallelujah, i found a forum where they hand out the codes like lollies.
ours was simply a matter of pressing system menu, then a series of five numbers, then ok.
it doesn’t get a lot easier than that and lo and behold….region free dvd player!
i checked out an american (region 1) dvd and it played perfectly.
my husband thinks i am a genius, but really it’s those guys who work out the hacks in the first place who are impressive.
still i did feel pretty cool and all…..
Comments
Leave a Reply
