Changing region on DVD-RW?

El Moose Monstero · Post by **El Moose Monstero** » 2006-01-26 12:50pm

Hey gang,

Was wondering if anyone knew how to persuade the DVD-RW in my laptop to play DVD's from any region after it's had it's 5 proper changes made? Is there a program that can tell the computer that it's actually looking at the right DVD after all or is it something terminal that can't really be solved? Have tried google-fu, but google-fu is non productive, plus I want to get something that isn't spyware-ridden and it's a bit difficult to spot that sort of thing in advance.

Cheers, y'all.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2006-01-26 01:23pm

You can try getting a modded firmware. This assumes the existance of such a beast, however. Also, if you mod your firmware, there's the chance of you bricking your drive. (brick v. - to turn a piece of computer hardware into something as useful as a brick).

The factory can reset the region change count on the drive, but this is a sub-optimal solution, for obvious reasons.

Thirdly, you can use something similar to DVD Decryptor, and rip the files from the DVD. You can then proceed to play the DVD from your hard disk. This is somewhat of a suboptimal solution as well, because not all playing software will play DVDs from disk properly.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2006-01-26 01:54pm

Look on the The Dangerous Brothers page and see if they have a RPC1 firmware for your drive.

And as they point out, a region free drive is only part of the battle.

The Dangerous Brothers wrote:As a lot of people don't seem to be aware, patching your drive with a region free firmware is only half the trick to be completely region free.
For there exists other region counters WITHIN the software (OS, players...) that need to be bypassed.
There are actually up to 3 region protections on a system:
- 1 in the DVD drive
- 1 in the Operating System (windows) - More info on Windows region management.
- 1 in the software player (eg. WinDVD, PowerDVD...)

When you flash your drive with a region free firmware (RPC-1), you remove the region counter from the drive itself completely, but with this counter gone, the software counters kick in to replace the one from the DVD drive. This means that you still have these other 2 to defeat!!!.
An alternate region free solution that is available for some drives is known as an "Autoreset" firmware: Instead of removing the counter from the drive completely, the counter simply resets itself to an unlocked state when the computer is restarted. This way, the drive appears as region protected (RPC-2) but the counter can be changed indefinitely. Creating autoreset patches is slightly more difficult for the patcher, but makes the life of the user easier because DVD Genie and Region Killer are not required as they are for RPC-1 firmwares.
On the other hand, it's easy for software manufacturers to detect autoreset firmwares, and if they decide to do so, you will still need a software patch in the long run. This is why RPC-1 firmwares are seen by most as the long term solution.

So, unless a program like DISCInfo or Drive Region Info (see the Utilities section on the Homepage) tells you that your drive is still protected or you used an autoreset firmware, your drive IS region free, and any region counters that you still see come from software region settings.

To bypass that, you need to use programs such as DVD Genie or DVD Region Killer (the later is highly recommanded).

Note: Currently, the only software region free solution when using WinDVD Platinum to play DVD's is WinDVD Tweaker Pro ($18.00 US)

xvi has written up an excellent article with even more information here.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2006-01-26 02:13pm

Here's something worth considering.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2006-01-26 02:31pm

What about the Windows Mplayer port- you do lose menus though (is that a violation of board rules to mention it)?

El Moose Monstero · Post by **El Moose Monstero** » 2006-01-27 03:51am

Thanks everyone, I did read about the flashing thing, but avoided it on the principle that I'm just trying to help out the g/f with her laptop - if there'd been a free and easy solution, it would have been perfect. As it is, she does have a new DVD player coming in the post (an actual DVD player, not a drive), but if I'd been able to resolve her original problem easily, that would have been handy.

Thanks again,

Manus Celer Dei · Post by **Manus Celer Dei** » 2006-01-27 06:54am

Keevan_Colton wrote:Here's something worth considering.

This is what I use. Make sure your drive is supported though; it mangled my old one something fierce.