DVD Regions Explained

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What are DVD regions?
What is RPC?
What is a software DVD player?
How can I determine which DVD drive model my Mac uses?
What do I need to do so I can play DVD movies from all regions?
After I defeat the region locks, why do I still get region switch warnings?
What happens if I use the software DVD utilities with an RPC-2 DVD drive?
What will happen if I use a firmware patch without using a software DVD utility?
What are the dangers of patching my DVD drives' firmware?
Why do you offer the original firmware along with the patched firmware?
What company is this 'Matshita' and where can I find a web site?
What do I do if I bought a third-party DVD-ROM drive for my Mac?
How do I install Mac OS 9 firmware patches in Mac OS X?

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What are DVD regions?
Unlike the original Video format, which had many different variations (BetaMax, VHS, sVHS, etc.) the DVD is truly a universal format, which can be viewed with the same quality on all DVD players around the world. Of course this was an unacceptable situation for the huge Hollywood movie companies, who want to milk the consumer as much as they can. So when the DVD format was designed, it was deliberately crippled so that DVDs from one geographic region could not be played on another.

DVD Video distributors use a global zone system to identify the origin of a DVD video disk. Home DVD video players are permanently programmed with a code to identify its 'zone'. The zones are:

Zone 1: North America
Zone 2: Europe, Japan, South Africa, Israel, Lebanon, Middle-East.
Zone 3: Korea
Zone 4: South America and Australia
Zone 5: Russia, North-East countries, Africa.
Zone 6: China

Since the companies that make DVD players can't know in advance in which zone each DVD player will be sold, most DVD players determine which region's DVDs they ought to play the first time a commercial DVD movie is inserted in the player. In order to avoid accidental mistaken recognition, most allow the consumer to switch the players' region five times (by inserting DVD disks from another region in the player). After the fifth time, the DVD player 'freezes' on the last region selected, and can't play disks from other regions.

Of course most consumers could not care less if some multimillionaire has enough money to buy a new jet with a bigger bath tub, and think of the DVD regions concept as just another no-so-subtle way of getting ripped off. Fortunately, there are many solutions which enable a DVD player to play DVD disks from any region, by modifying it so that it can allow an infinite number of region switches instead of only five.


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What is RPC?
RPC stands for "Region Playback Control", and is built in all DVD drives. There are two variations:

RPC-1. A region-free (RPC-1) DVD drive is a drive that has no restriction on which region's DVD disks it may play. It simply ignores the region 'flags' that are on the DVD disk. You may compare this to a normal audio CD player that is able to play any audio CD, regardless of which country you bought it from.


RPC-2. A region-locked (RPC-2) DVD drive has the following restrictions:

to play a movie, it must first be 'set' to a region (usually by inserting and playing a commercial DVD movie).
It will only play commercial DVD disks whose region number is the same as the drive's region number. If the DVD movie's region number is different for the drive's region number, the drive won't transmit some data required to decrypt the movie, and instead will report an error.
The region number may be changed only a very limited number of times, usually five. After the last change, the drive will be locked on one region, and you won't be able to play DVD movies from other regions.
Please note that the RPC is not the same as the software region lock what most software DVD players use. The RPC is built in the drive's firmware, and is independent from the rest of the computer.

Virtually all DVD-ROM drives shipped with Macintosh computers (with the exception of some old models) use RPC-2.

Hint: to determine if your computer is equipped with an RPC-1 or an RPC-2 DVD-ROM drive, use the utility "DVDInfo", found in the downloads section.


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What is a software DVD player?
Basically it's an application that can decode DVD data and reproduce it on your computer's screen. Currently the only software DVD player for the Macintosh which offers "professional" quality is Apple's DVD player, which comes with the operating system in all Mac models which have a built-in DVD-ROM drive.

Apple's DVD player is not very good when you compare it with Windows DVD players such as the PowerDVD and WinDVD, but there is currently no other choice. In the first versions, the Apple DVD player required the existence of a specific video card with DVD decoding capability in order to function. From version 2, the Apple DVD player is software based, and runs without the need for a hardware DVD decoder. However, Apple has limited its usefulness by making it compatible only with Apple's built-in DVD-ROM drives and graphics cards.

As most software DVD players, the Apple DVD player has a software lock which allows the user to switch between regions five times. After the fifth time, the Apple DVD player will only play movies from the last selected region. This region lock is software-based and not the same as the DVD-ROM drive's RPC system.

Hint: in order to defeat the software region lock of the Apple DVD player, use the utility "Region", found in the downloads section. Please note that unlocking the software region lock is useless if you have an RPC-2 DVD drive. The Apple DVD player will mistakenly report that you can switch the region, but after the fifth time, the RPC-2 system will lock the DVD drive, regardless of what the Apple DVD player reports.


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How can I determine which DVD drive model my Mac uses?
The easiest way is to use the Apple System Profiler. This is an application which displays various technical information about your computer, and can be found in the Apple menu under Mac OS 9, and the Utilities folder in Mac OS X.

Here's a brief description on how to find the information you need, using the Apple System Profiler.

Select the Apple System Profiler from the Apple menu.
After the main window of the Apple System Profiler opens, select the "Devices and Volumes" tab.
From the list, select the DVD-ROM drive and click on the little triangle to reveal its information. You will see something similar to this:  Things to look for.

Vendor: the company what built the drive.

Product ID: the drive model.

Revision number: the current firmware version.

Using this information, you can determine which firmware update you need to download from the downloads section.

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What do I need to do so I can play DVD movies from all regions?
In order to be able to play commercial DVD movies from all regions without any restriction in your Macintosh computer you need to circumvent two separate region locks:

The RPC-2 lock on the firmware of your DVD-ROM drive
The software lock of the Apple DVD player.
The first lock is firmware based: this means that it is part of your DVD-ROM drive's hardware, rather than part of the computer or operating system. So it does not matter what kind of software or operating system (Mac OS or Windows) you use, this region lock will always be active. The only way to circumvent it is to change the firmware of your DVD-ROM drive.

The second lock is particular to the Apple DVD player. This application stores region information to a part of your computer's memory which is called XPRAM. This part of the memory remains on even when you switch your computer off. Normally, you have no way of erasing XPRAM, unless you reset your computer's motherboard. However there are utilities which allow you to access this XPRAM and make changes to the settings stored there. You can find these software DVD utilities in the download section.


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After I defeat the region locks, why do I still get region switch warnings?
This is because although a region-free (RPC-1) DVD-ROM drive cheerfully disregards how many times you have switched regions, the computer's DVD software still needs to be set to a specific region to play a DVD movie.

So, the Apple DVD player will still present region warnings every time you switch between regions, because the software DVD utilities do not modify it in any way. They just allow the user to change the region 'behind the Apple DVD player's back' and reset the counter (which keeps track of how many times you are allowed to switch regions) as well.

Finally, please note that some commercial DVD movies contain code that causes them to behave differently when played in different regions. So if the movie you are trying to play displays a message informing you that you can't play it in this region, try switching regions. Usually DVD movies from regions 1 and 2 will not have this problem.


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What happens if I use the software DVD utilities with an RPC-2 DVD drive?
In this case, you are fooling the software (i.e. the Apple DVD player), but you are not fooling the DVD drive.

Here's an example: You have your drive set at region 2, and one region change left. You use the software DVD utility 'Region' to change the settings to region 1 and five region changes left. Then you insert a region 1 DVD movie in your DVD and try to play it. The Apple DVD player will not display any warning, but the DVD-ROM drive (which still is set for region 2 and has one region change left) will switch to region 1 automatically, and will freeze to region 1. So the next time you try to play a region 2 movie, the Apple DVD player will warn you that you have 4 region changes left, but the DVD drive will not play the movie.


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What will happen if I use a firmware patch without using a software DVD utility?
In this case, your region-free (RPC-1) drive will be able to play DVDs from all regions, but the Apple DVD software player will stop you from switching regions after five changes. You may be able to use another software DVD player that does not keep track of how may region changes you've made. However, the easiest solution is to use the 'Region' utility to reset the Apple's DVD player region counter.


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What are the dangers of patching my DVD drives' firmware?
Unfortunately, there are several bad things that can happen when you change your DVD drives' firmware. Most of these things are not specific to the RPC-1 patches. They can happen in any firmware update.

'Firmware' is an application (or program if you prefer the PC terminology) that is located in a special memory section of the drives' hardware and basically tells the device how to behave. It is a bridge (or interpreter) between the computer's operating system and the actual hardware device.

A firmware updater is simply an application that uploads new data to the firmware memory. In this regard, it functions rather like a software updater. It looks for specific information stored in the drives' firmware, and if it finds it, it uploads the new version.

If however the computer crashes or the upload process is otherwise interrupted, the firmware will only be half-written on the drive and it (the drive) will become inoperable. The firmware updater will not work then, since it will not find the data it expects on the firmware, and your only option is to send the drive for repairs (or possibly replacement, since nobody knows how to fix hi-tech devices nowadays).

This is why it is important to make sure that no other applications are running (which could crash the computer) while you run the firmware updater. In fact, it is a good idea to start the computer with extensions off to minimize the chance of some third-party extension crashing the computer at an awkward moment.

Please note that if you update your drives' firmware with an 'unofficial' firmware update, you will void your warranty.

Also, in some drives the ability to update their firmware is disabled on purpose. If you own such a drive, every attempt to update your firmware will result in an error. In such cases the drive will remain operational, and in its region-locked (RPC-2) state. Unfortunately there is no known method of making a firmware-locked drive to accept a firmware update.


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Why do you offer the original firmware along with the patched firmware?
If you look at the table on the downloads page, you will notice that we list all the original firmware versions for each drive, but we offer only the latest version in the patched firmware column.

This is because you don't need to use exactly the same patched (region free) firmware version as the original version of your drive. In fact, using the newer firmware version will improve your drives' performance apart from making it region-free. (So if you see that your drive uses a newer firmware version than the ones listed in the original firmware column, then you can still use the patched firmware, but the performance of your drive may be degraded.)

We also offer all the original firmware versions (that we could find) for download. We do this for two reasons:

If the patched firmware presents problems on your computer, you have a way of reverting to the original firmware version by downloading and installing the original firmware updater.
A user may be interested in upgrading his drives' firmware with the original updater to improve its performance, without having to use the unsupported patched firmware versions.
Please note that downloading and installing the original (RPC-2) versions of the firmware will not unlock your DVD drive.


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What company is this 'Matshita' and where can I find a web site?
Most of Apple's DVD-ROM drives are built by "Matshita". Yet there is no real company by that name. "Matshita" is short for "Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd.", sometimes known as "Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics Industries Ltd." which in turn is longhand for... Panasonic! So in reality the DVD drive on your Mac is from Panasonic, and that's where you need to go to find technical information.


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What do I do if I bought a third-party DVD-ROM drive for my Mac?
First you need to determine if your DVD drive is RPC-2 or RPC-1. You can use the 'DVDInfo' utility to find this out. If your drive is RPC-1, you only need to use the software DVD utility 'Region' to make your Mac region-free. If your DVD drive is RPC-2, you will also need a firmware patch. The best place to look is the Firmware page. Note that the firmware patch will probably be designed to run on a Windows PC. You may be able to apply it using a PC emulator like the Connectix Virtual PC, but the safest thing is to temporarily install the DVD drive to a friend's PC and patch it there.


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How do I install Mac OS 9 firmware patches in Mac OS X?
Most of the firmware patches are based on an Apple firmware installation utility, which was created years ago and has not been updated recently. This means that this utility does not support Mac OS X, and should only be run from Mac OS 9.x or older. Mac OS 9 runs on emulation in the Classic environment of Mac OS X, but you cannot install the firmware from it.

So you must boot your computer from Mac OS 9 to install the firmware patches which are built for Mac OS 9.

For "switchers" who have never used Mac OS 9, a brief explanation on how you boot into Mac OS 9 may be needed:

In Mac OS X, open the System Preferences application, and select the Startup Disk icon.
If you have Mac OS 9 (Classic) installed and your computer supports booting from Mac OS 9, you should see a system folder in the list with a "9" on it. Select it and click the "Restart..." button.
Your computer will start from Mac OS 9. When you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key on the keyboard until the Mac OS logo appears with the message "Extensions Off".
Run the Firmware updater.
Go to the Apple menu, select the "Control Panels" icon. A new window will open. From it, select the Startup Disk icon. Select Mac OS X as your startup system and click the "Restart" button.
While you're at it, take a spin with Mac OS 9. You will find it far more responsive and user-friendly than Mac OS X, although not quite as glitzy.


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