One of the few things I still missed on MacOS X was being able to play DVDs from foreign regions. Not that I have many R1 DVDs, but I have a couple and had been unable to play them on my MacBook Pro until now. I’ve just discovered that RPC-1 firmwares are already available for the Matshita drives on the newer MacBook Pros.

Before going on: keep in mind that if something goes wrong, the DVD drive on your laptop may become useless. You’ve been warned.

• Run “Utilities -> System Profiler”, there to “ATA”, and write down your DVD’s model and revision. For example, mine is a MATSHITADVD-R UJ-857E Rev. ZA0E.
• Download the patched firmware for your DVD. Careful! Be sure to download the one for your model AND revision #.
• Unzip and run the “Update XXXX to region free” program. It takes less than a minute, during which it is very important that your computer doesn’t lock or powers off (not that dangerous on a laptop with batery and all, but anyway…)
• Reboot when told to, and cross your fingers.
• Check with DVD_Info_X that your DVD is already “RPC-1 (region free)”

Now your DVD drive is already region-free, but when you put a DVD in it you still get the usual dialog window asking to change zones, with the feared limit counter. There are two options here:

• Download Region X and use it to change zones as many times as you need.
• The one asking you to change zones is actually the DVD player bundled with MacOS X. You can use any other program you want to watch your DVDs, like VLC, and you’re set.