In Tiger(10.4) if you put in a different region DVD there is a software lock that tells you that you have to change your region and if you say no it auto-ejects the DVD. But it wasn't protected from a hardware access level, so you could leave the dialog up and open up VLC or something and just play the audio.

Now in Leopard(10.5) region DVDs are protected at a kernel level so can't access the data period without switching. Which means that if I want to watch a non-region DVD I have to A)Boot into Tiger (I don't have a tiger partition laying around) B)Boot into windows (shudder) or C) Install some linux distro and boot into that.

They removed the functionality of my computer, for what? To keep normal consumers from watching DVDs they purchased? As if any damn pirate has EVER in the HISTORY of copying left a region in a DVD copy. The only person this hurts is consumers, and thats the way DRM will always be.