DVD Region locked, is this a problem?

[Reedger]

I own a MacBook Pro and have recently discovered Handbrake, however I have a small problem regarding my DVD drive region. My younger siblings use my computer to watch their movies and have switched regions 5 times, and is now currently stuck on the American/Canadian (Region 1) region. My problem is that I live in Ireland (Region 2), and will be leaving the house soon. Before I leave the house, I would like to rip all my Region 2 DVD's onto my MacBook, but so far I have only been able to do so, with the Region 1 DVD's. Due to my drive region being locked, does the pose a problem for me? And why is it that I have not been able to successfully rip DVD's from regions outside Region 1? Any help/advice is appreciated.

[JohnAStebbins]

Yep, your drive is now a reagion 1 only drive. Nothing you can do to fix that drive since your siblings burned all 5 region switches. Your only option would be to get yourself an external USB drive. Preferably a "region free" drive so that you don't have to worry about this happening again.

[GregiBoy]

And keep your siblings away from it!!

[Smithcraft]

There might be something about OS X and the way it deals with region locking, or it might be the Panasonic drives, but you might be able to work around this by pre-ripping with MakeMKV.

SC

[TedJ]

If you're lucky you may be able to find an Apple service centre that can perform a vendor reset on the drive, giving you five more region changes. If so, be very careful with them, as the Panasonic drives used in Macbook Pros won't allow access to out of region discs at all; other drives won't play the disc but still allow access to the disc's encrypted sectors which is all that's required for HandBrake or a DVD ripper to work.

For this reason, I second Smithcraft's advice to buy an external drive - I have a Pioneer DVD/BD combo drive for this very reason.

[Smithcraft]

That's John's advice.

SC

[TedJ]

Shut up and take the praise, dummy.

[Smithcraft]

Yes Sir!

SC