Macintosh Region Free Firmware
 

Afternoon/Evening,
I know there have been a couple of threads on here about making the dvd drives in Mac computers region free. For quite some time the later model machines, including the Intel based Macs, could not be firmware flashed to make them region free :( However, back in September a chap called ben11 started patching the later drives. At that point there wasn't a patch for the drive in my Early 2006 Intel iMac, however I've checked back and it appears the list has grown somewhat an now includes a firmware patch for my iMac :)

Have a look at the complete list here

A few caveats. Firstly, the patcher apparently does not work on 10.5 (Leopard) so you'd need to firmware flash the drive when in Tiger. I'm not about to even try to see if it runs under Leopard, I'm going to trust what others have said and boot from Tiger to patch the drive. Secondly, you need to delete a few things to get Region X to work under Leopard, namely:

I've downloaded the firmware patch for the iMac and I'll give it a shot later on and report back with wether it works or not.

Nice one Markus, is the delete thing a one off?

I'm not sure Jack. The quoted text came from a post on this thread, which I've not read fully. I get the impression that perhaps you may need to perform the delete if you change regions again. I'll have a play around tonight and see if I can figure out if it's a one off thing.

Looks a lot like you need to delete the file every time, not a problem at all and I'm sure someone will update region x. Not that I've used it since updating my drives!

Jack, Some good news! Firstly, the patch for the Intel iMac worked flawlessly (when applied from 10.4 of course). As for the deletion of those files, it only needs to be done once.

Here's what I did:

Applied the patch under Tiger (10.4.11)
Rebooted into 10.5.1
Deleted the following items:

~/Library/Application Support/DVD Player.
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.DVDPlayer.plist

I then ran Region X, set the region to Region 2 and quit Region X.
I then launched DVD Player and inserted "The Day Of The Triffids" (BBC Series, pure class). DVD Player was more than happy with it and played the disk.

I quit DVD Player, launched Region X, switch to Region 1, quit Region X, relaunched DVD Player and inserted "Bad Santa - Directors Cut". Again DVD Player was happy to play the DVD, no dialog asking about region switching :)

I tried switching back and forth like that a few times and it's still working :)

Nice one, I'll delete them and give it a whirl.

Damn may have to wait as only have Leopard on the Macbook Pro and am new to this Mac lark lol