DVD drive region

DVD drive region is a setting that limits DVD-ROM optical drives to playing back video DVDs that are coded to a specific region.

Regions

 * 0: Playable in all regions, or "region free" (cannot be set by regular consumer software).
 * 1: Canada, the United States, and their respective territories.
 * 2: Europe, Western Asia, Northern Africa, South Africa, and Japan.
 * 3: Southeast Asia.
 * 4: Mexico, Central and South America, and the South Pacific.
 * 5: Africa, North and South Asia.
 * 6: Mainland China.

Modifying the region setting
Mac OS X (now macOS) contains functionality to change this region setting in drives accessed by Mac computers, but only up to 5 times before the region is "locked" and a factory reset by the manufacturer would be required. This is a feature built directly into the firmware of optical drives supporting DVD playback.

Articles

 * Play any region-coded DVD by mlnoone at Mac OS X Hints (2009-03-02)