DVDs

One of the 1st things I usually do when I get a new DVD drive for my PC is to find an RPC-1 firmware for it. I've never had any issue finding RPC-1 firmware. Today, I thought I'd do the same for the MacBook Pro. Guess what, I can't find any. After googling a bit, I find that people used to be able to use VLC to bypass the Mac's region code but somehow when the drives were upgraded, this VLC function was broken and has never been fixed since.

This website http://macnewbie.wordpress.com/2006/04/21/region-free-dvd-on-macbook-pro-all-you-need-is-a-windows-xp-machine/ indicated that the solution is to use an XP machine to stream the DVD to the Mac. This kinds of defeats the purpose of having a Mac.

Just goes to show, the Mac still has a long way to go to match what is available on XP. It is also very unfortunate that Apple would still try to keep region codes working on the Mac. In this day and age of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

I'll continue to check for whether people managed to find a solution to this but it looks like I have to get my wife to watch DVDs via the XP machine and not the Mac.