How come my Mac can't play all DVDs?

Question

For example, some DVDs aren't in the Region code...

it says it can't change the region code and all I can do is eject the disc. My DVDs are real, how do I change the region code settings?

Answer 1

Robert0 you are incorrect.
My Macs play dvds that my other devices won't.

Ellharp, check your dvd player region settings. It may be as simple as that. If that doesn't work you may want to try different dvd player software, try Windows Media Player and there are many others out there. Intervideo, well i'm not sure if that's for macintosh.

~Shoe

Answer 2

Region codes limit your playing DVD that were not released in your region. It all revolves around this: Movies are released in theaters and also on DVD at different times in different parts of the world. They may be months apart in U.S. compared with Japan. You could buy a DVD from one country while the theaters were still trying to sell tickets for showings in another country. Because the theater owners hate to loose ticket sales to DVD buyers, they have a plan in place to add a digital bit to DVD movie disks to communicate the region to the player. Most computer makers agree to comply with this and add the bit detector to the DVD system of their computers. If you, or someone else who uses your computer, travels around the world and buys DVD movies in other countries, as soon as you put a foreign sold disk in the drive you will see the message warning you that you must change the region code in order to play that disk AND it can only be changed four times (5 codes including the first). You or someone else who used your computer, agreed to that and now you are stuck, no more changes.

Depending on which Mac computer you have, it is either hardware or software that limits your changing the region code. If the software is out of changes, try another application such as VLC. If it is the actual drive, you have a much more difficult problem.

As you seem to be completely unaware that any change of region code have ever occurred on your Mac, others must be using the DVD player and are agreeing to the big, scary warning that always appears when you insert any DVD that has a region code bit burned into it that is not the same as that of your DVD playing system. There may be options available to change the firmware of the drive back and remove the code lock but I can't tell you what those options are.

Just for grins, here are the region codes:

* Region 0: Compatible with any DVD player/region
* Region 1: U.S.A and its territories, Canada
* Region 2: Europe, Japan, Middle East, South Africa
* Region 3: East and Southeast Asia
* Region 4: Australia, New Zealand, Central America, Mexico, South America
* Region 5: Africa, Eastern Europe, North Korea
* Region 6: China
* Region 7: Reserved
* Region 8: International venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)

Additionally, I will tell you that from my experience, all DVDs sold in all the cheap markets in China are codeless and compatible with all scan systems (NTSC and PAL). They play on all players and never ask you to accept a code change. This is in line with China's typical loose compliance with all intellectual property rights. But somewhere there may be one I haven't bought that has a code so don't buy a hundred DVDs in China and get miffed if some of them have a code or don't play for you.

Answer 3

i know for a fact a mac does not accept any dvd with minor or major scratches and or bootleg/fakelly made cd's