DVD region?

[chinks]

Someone gave my daughter a DVD but none of my players can play it. My computers all just eject it straight away, but for one of my external drives a window pops up for me to change my drive's region. Apparently this is a region 4 DVD, which appears to be South America. It is currently region 3, which is South East Asia.

I think I'm only given limited chances to change my drive's region, so I don't want to change it or it won't read my other region 3 DVDs. Is there another way around this? My daughter is dying to watch the show.

[Brian]

Someone gave my daughter a DVD but none of my players can play it. My computers all just eject it straight away, but for one of my external drives a window pops up for me to change my drive's region. Apparently this is a region 4 DVD, which appears to be South America. It is currently region 3, which is South East Asia.

I think I'm only given limited chances to change my drive's region, so I don't want to change it or it won't read my other region 3 DVDs. Is there another way around this? My daughter is dying to watch the show.

Buy a cheap DVD player with no regioning chip.

[chinks]

Yeah... that's one option I guess. But I was hoping to get it on a HDD so I can put it on the iPad or iPod Touch or laptop so she can watch while riding the car or while we're out.

[Brian]

Have you tried Handbrake, then?

[chinks]

Yes I have handbrake but the DVD gets spat out even before I can set loose handbrake on it.

[Iskandar Taib]

You know, the last time I bought a major brand DVD drive (a Samsung, back around 2004 or so) it said "Region 3" on the back, but it would play all my Region 1 disks as well. I was told many major brands were skirting around the region issue in Malaysia, selling what were, in effect, multiregion players on the sly. Only the really big companies (Sony, especially) complied with the rules. Maybe things have changed.

(One thing that really amused me when checking out the electronic stores back then - Best Dengki, etc. - was that they were all pushing people to buy HD big screen TVs - with no way of playing any sort of HD source! In the store, they always had some sort of hard drive player or computer hidden away somewhere, or one of those weird Chinese S-DVD players - with no brand name - that they would not sell you. I'd engage the salesdroids in conversation about this issue, which they admitted. This changed when the BD players started appearing, of course.)

Iskandar

[pointblank]

The whole region protection is a big joke. Manufacturers dont seem to understand that people travel and purchase over the internet. There are some region hacks available but you need to figure out what kind of player you have installed.

[chinks]

Yeah... it's gonna drive me to piracy. I own the DVD, I at least want to be able to watch it. If we don't own the content we at least own the right to be able to watch it and on whatever device we want to watch it on! I'll probably just look for it by some other electronic means.

I think my dastard problem is that I'm using a Mac. Had I been using a tower CPU PC with a Samsung DVD drive fitted I'd have read the darn DVD without knowing any better about zones... sigh...

[Anuar Ahmad]

For DVD player, the region code can be set with a sequenced input thru the remote controller which i've done for my Samsung and Sharp player...google for region free for your specific brand and model.

For PC, i've flashed the firmware for the DVD drive so that it's region free and installed Region Killer software for windows as that windows will locked the region after 5 changes made. Similarly, the firmware is brand and model specific.

Flash the firmware for the DVD drive at your own risk as doing it wrongly may disable it totally.

[C-Fu]

using vlc cannot ah?