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After reading this article from slashdot regarding Blockbuster Chief plea to End the DVD Region Code, it reinforced my feeling that DVD Region Code are useless to protect against piracy and impact consumers in a very negative way (I would even venture to say that they are “evil”).

Like many European expatriates, I’ve been longing to watch foreign movies that are not available in the US. It should be no surprises that only a tiny fraction of foreign movies are released in the US market. Thanks to online stores such as amazon.fr or fnac.fr it is now possible to purchase foreign DVD and ship them to the US at a reasonable cost.

While this works in principle, there are two major hurdles to overcome. First, the video formats are different around the world. Most European countries use PAL (625 lines, 50 field) as their video standard (except for France that uses SECAM, I guess they like to be different) and the US use NTSC (525 lines, 60 field). The second problem is that the movie industry chose to control the availability (and pricing) of movies by restricting where movies can be played via the use of Region Code. A movie “tagged” Region 2 (Europe) can’t be played on a Region 1 player (USA).

Knowing this, is still went ahead and decided to purchase a copy of the goofy comedy “Astérix & Obélix : Mission Cléopâtre” encoded in PAL Region 2. I figured that where there is a will, there is a way and I would come up with something creative to watch this movie.

My first attempt was to use the DVD player in my PowerBook G4 and rip it. Unfortunately, the DVD player firmware allows you to change the region only 5 times before it locks itself and probably self destroy. I poked around the web to find a hacked version of the firmware that would remove this limitation. At the time, none were available and regardless, I was somewhat apprehensive to flash an unkown firmware in my brand new laptop (since, a firmware patch was made available).

Riping DVD’s

I had to wait until I went back to Europe to finally watch this movie. I loaded the DVD on another Mac with the DVD player set to region 2, and riped it with DVD Backup. This application allows you to save the DVD content on your HD and in the process remove the region flag. I then transfered the files to my PowerBook via the network and now could watch it with my dvd player application. The only problem was that the DVD movie I had legally acquired was now confined to the bowels of my laptop. If I wanted to play it in my living room, I had to move my computer there and jerry rig my home theatre setup. Unacceptable.

Update 6/11/05: DVDBackup seems to have vanished for download. Try Mac the ripper instead.

Living room DVD player

Entering the search for a Region Free DVD player. After googleing around, I came across this great bargain, the Philips DVD727 Progressive scan player. It features everything you want from a CD/DVD player and more. It supports NTSC and PAL, and can be programmed to behave as a Region 0 player, which means, it can play DVD from any regions. The programming is very simple, open the CD tray, and hit 9999 0 on the remote control. It has an optical audio output and will support Dolby and DTS surround sound. It will also play MP3 CD’s. Voila, Region free DVD player for about $70!

Region Free PowerBook

Since this experience, I found an update for my PowerBook DVD player that will allow an unlimited number of region setting changes. Find out the right firmware for your Mac.