I have drawn that glarmammal...

[capri0mni]

And here she (or he) is:


Now, two questions:

[Poll #818917]

*Makes a left turn signal*

I have the impression that dvd players on computers are region-free. ... Is that correct?

Comments

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

It depends on your DVD drive. Sometimes the buggers get locked into one region after you've changed regions a few times--you get like five times of changing between R1 and R2 and then it locks itself into the last one used. Damn it. Hope Gord can explain more. I r knackered. *flump*

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

No wonder ur knackered; you've been bouncing around like a feathery, grousy ping pong ball all day. :-)

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

Snowgrouse is more or less right. Laptop DVD drives tend not to be multi-region, and so that you can choose which region you want your machine to be (say you bought a laptop in America but live in the UK) you get given a finite number of region changes (five, usually) which happen automatically when you play discs of different regions. Then, that's it.

However, I believe (and no two sources I have consulted can agree on this) that if you use a player like VLC in conjunction with libdvdcss, that you can play discs from any region. I think libdvdcss actually comes included with VLC player. Plus it's a nice media player that plays any format you throw at it, including DivX and just about anything else ...

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

Nope, I was wrong. DVD region coding is controlled by the firmware of the DVD drive in recent drives (one of which your new machine probably contains). So, to get multiregion playback, you have to flash the firmware of the drive with a new version. I've never done this, but my limited research on the matter has lead me here: http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Nope, I was wrong. DVD region coding is controlled by the firmware of the DVD drive in recent drives (one of which your new machine probably contains).

So I've got region one then. Okay. Now I know.

you have to flash the firmware of the drive with a new version.

Buh-wuh?

[gordon-r-d.livejournal.com]

I'm using a program called DVD Region Free, it disables the region check for most DVD player programs, bee using it a few years and had no problems with it, I'll see if I can dig out the install files (it's under 2Mb) from whichever CDR they're backed up onto.

[trinalin.livejournal.com]

However, there's still the firmware. DVDGenie is another program that also resets software limits to switching region, but you'll have to do a firmware hack, as spoo mentioned, to reset the DVD-ROM drive (if there even is one for the DVD-ROM drive). I loved my old LiteOn DVD drive - a simple DOS program made the drive region-free.

[gordon-r-d.livejournal.com]

I haven't had to do anything to my firmware and DVD-RF lets me play any disc from any region, it hasn't let me down yet.