Region specific DVDs?

[Howlin0001]

Last Friday I bought the complete season 4 of CSI. I was told today by a friend it is a region one dvd so it won't work in my dvd player (I'm in region 2. I live in Ireland) unless I have a multi regional dvd player. I tried one of the CSI disks in my laptop and it came up with a notice saying I need to change my region settings. So if I want I can change my dvd drive to a region one, but I'm told by the notice I can only change the regions a maximum of 4 times before the 4th time I change the region it becomes permanent.

I'm wondering if I change the region from region two to region two can I still play region two dvds in my laptop? And if I can could I still play music cds and game disks in the drive or not?

[BloodAngel]

I'm pretty certain you can only play region one DVDs on the region one setting and region two on region two only, which is annoying but you can pick up a multi region DVD player fairly cheaply these days. Have a look on ebuyer.com or something, they nearly always have sales on. As for games and music I think you're ok for CDs, not 100% certain on games though.

 

Hope this helps!

[indy500fan]

You can generally make a DVD player region free also, although I don't know how legal it is to do so.

[Racheya]

I have experience with this!

 

Good idea is to google your DVD model with 'region hack' or 'region 0 coding'. The Amazon website actually has information on this also, if you can find it. I came across it when googling to make mine Region 0.

 

Another alternative is to download VLC player, it will play Region 1 disks, I promise you :) No messing around with changing region settings.

[Doomster]

For many players, a remote code can be found which will allow de-regioning - some disks attempt to defeat this using other measures - "Region Code Enhanced" - RCE.

 

For the drive in the computer, there may also be workarounds to eliminate the "defective by default" behaviour, from firmware hacks, tricks to allow unlimited resets etc.

RPC1 is an old hack, taking the region control away from the drive, and bringing software control (unsupported in Win7) into action unless also blocked. RPC1 seems to be pretty irrelevant anyway, as it seems there are software tools that can work with a wrong region RPC2 drive (SOME drives).

Best hack is "RPC2 autoreset", as it gives the impression that the hardware is making the region switch, but does not consume a change.

 

There is another tool that may assist, DVD43 - the exact provenance is uncertain, and there is a free one and a non-free.

[jedc53]

This means that DVD players and DVDs are labeled for operation on within a specific geographical region in the world.DVDs have the ability to encode an option which specifies which regions in the world the discs can be played.It is a technique designed to allow motion picture studios to control aspects of a release,

[Skeptical]

This means that DVD players and DVDs are labeled for operation on within a specific geographical region in the world.DVDs have the ability to encode an option which specifies which regions in the world the discs can be played.It is a technique designed to allow motion picture studios to control aspects of a release,

 

And another reason to hate DRM and built-in content management.

[Sam]

If you have a PS3 or Xbox 360, try using them as an alternative.