Mac OS X.1 Powerbook/G4 DVD info

[Joseph S]

There's good news with the new DVD player in OS X. If you flashed your DVD drive to RPC1 status, then you will be able to play DVDs of all regions at your leisure!! (as it should be)
When you try to play a disc other than R1 you are asked to change the region code of the drive via a prompt . The prompt requires your admin pass to do the change. It then changes to the appropriate region and will now for example play all R2 DVDs without asking. (It will say you have 5 more attempts)
However, to get all those 5 back, just go ahead and delete the following file: "com.apple.dvdplayer.plist" in your "/library/preferences" directory.
I brought it down to 2 tries and then just started deleting the file and every time I got all 5 times back, probably about 12 region changes successfully. It defaults to R1 after the prefs are deleted each time.
Now get back in your business travel mode and enjoy DVDs on your Ti and iBooks.

Rumor has it that the official release for X.1 is Monday.
The player is very stable and I had no probs with playing DVD while at the same time burning a CD on firewire and watching a streaming QT movie.
Warning: Make sure your DVD drive has an RPC1 firmware, otherwise those chances will be "really" used up and you will be stuck in that region.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

My Lombard Powerbook is undergoing surgery tonight in preparation for X.1 I just installed a larger hard drive, partitioned it for both OS 9 and X, and am doing the initial install of OS 9. After that, I'll restore my backups and get things back to normal in the Classic environment.
Hmmm...the OS install seems to have stalled...
How do you tell the firmware level of the DVD-ROM drive?
- Steve

 

[Joseph S]

quote: How do you tell the firmware level of the DVD-ROM drive?[/quote]
1)You will want to check the drive brand and model # with Apple System Profiler.
2)Region free(RPC-1) firmwares and the app for the drive model you have will likely be available from:
"The Firmware Page" http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/firmware/
3)DVDInfo is the utility used to check your Drive Firmware status(RPC-1/RegionFree or RPC2(5 tries and you're done) http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzen...DVDtoolkit.sit
4)Various info and tools for enabling the OS 9 DVD Player to be region free and links to common Apple DVD-Rom firmwares are available here: http://web.tiscali.it/thinkdifferent/
5)The bad news:
Last I heard was that all the hardware enabled DVD players (B/W G3s and Wallstreet/Lombard Powerbooks) aren't pre-enabled to run the DVD.app in 10.1. The link to Apple's hardware requirements in the 10.1 help system leads to a "placeholder" so the specs aren't released yet. (If you have DVD Player v. 2.0 or greater installed in OS 9, then it should work already or in the near future.)
In OS 9 various hacks were made to remove the machine checks in the player. I'm guessing that one for 10.1 will follow fairly soon as the 10.1 player is a software based decoder. The prefs are editable with a simple utility from the developer tools and the resources inside the application package are hackable with Resedit.
The lock is put in for machines deemed not capable of software playback, though my old 8600 was capable of it with a G3 300 in OS 9. As of a few betas ago, the player refused to work with RPC1(region free) drives , but that is no longer the case in the GM so I think they're constantly fine tuning it and we may see small patches 2-3 weeks after the release similar to the 10.0.1-.4 schedule.
[Edited last by Joseph S on September 23, 2001 at 12:11 AM]

 

[Steve Tannehill]

Thanks for the info, Joseph!
I am running with the new hard drive and am very, very happy. It is quiet and fast, in distinct contrast to the original drive that I've been running with for the past two years.
Now all I need is 10.1, and I'm in business!
- Steve