Have just bought the DVD of one of my favourite films - Alexander Korda's "The Thief of Bagdad". On trying to play it in my DVD player, I get the message "This DVD may not be played in your region." Is there anything I can do to be able to play it ?
Some DVD players have a "region free" hack available, and you may have some luck if you search for your machine type and "region free hack" without the quotes on Google.
Or use your computer's DVD drive and either reset the region on it (Which can only be done a very limited number of times) and watch it on your computer, or download an illegal (in the UK and USA) program to let you make a region free copy which will play on your normal DVD player.
If you bought it from a business in the UK, you can take it back as unfit for purpose, unless you were warned before you bought it that it was not playable in Region 2 DVD players.
In message , Jim Hawkins writes
I'm not sure if it still applies, but some years ago when I last bought a DVD player there was a way, with various button presses to set it to play DVDs from any region. Maybe a Google search on your model number and something like "region hack" could get you the info on how to modify it.
You may find a hack here:
Which will only work if you also have a decrypter program installed to remove the region coding, at least on the version I use.
I have several DVDs I picked up abroad that my player won't play. Play it via your computer. There are programmes out there to convert it too.
Bit on the topic here.
Get the DVD player chipped down Tottenham Court Road (DVD player region breakers to NASA) or get a chipped region free unit from the likes of Richer Sounds.
I don't know if it is still true but a few years back some very cheap supermarket units can be hacked to region free using heckers magic keycodes to go into engineering mode and reset it if you have the patience. Best place to ask are groups where the experts in playing new US releases on UK kit hang out. Google "region free" and model number.
Your PC might well also play it if you allow a DVD drive to lock down as a foreign region playing device. You are only allowed a small number of region changes before it dies. Blame the DMCA, RIAA and greedy US film makers and their fat slimy lawyers for that.
Regards, Martin Brown
rip it and re-record it
Search online to see if your DVD player can be set to different regions or any region. If not, you can pick up a DVD player for around twenty quid - just check which are okay before buying.
SteveW
In this increasingly multi-national world (for the likes of big companies like those involved in DVDs at least) isn't it time nonsenses like region coding was abolished ?
Last time (only time) I bought a DVD player, it was sold as "region free". I'm pretty sure it was some other model rebadged, as the manual looked "reprinted" and had an additional card explaining the Vulcan nerve pinch sequence on the remote to disable region-locking.
It should have been abolished when it started, along with crap that you can't skip at the beginning, but the media companies have paid a lot to our legislators.
Buy this because paying money will deliver high quality
Some bootlegs are unreliable or of poor quality. ...
But this pitch only works to the extent that the paid-for item is indeed of high quality. When anti-copying restrictions are added to media, it actually lowers their quality relative to the illegitimate item. I often hear from parents who download unauthorised cartoons for their kids because the DVDs come with long, unskippable (or difficult-to-skip) adverts, the worst of which deploy "pester power" tactics intended to get kids to nag their parents to buy something. As far as these parents are concerned, spending money gets them a product that much worse than the free version.
This is US corporate greed at work. It is no surprise that the world experts at hacking DVD players to be region free live in London. The entire thing is to prevent UK movie buffs buying cheaper US DVDs and getting the movies before the UK official release date.
It is a throwback to the good old days of physical film when they would show them in America first and then send the out to the ROW. It makes little or no sense in a digital era where the film is a cheap bitstream rather than an expensive to make physical print copy.
Regards, Martin Brown
Have just bought the DVD of one of my favourite films - Alexander Korda's "The Thief of Bagdad". On trying to play it in my DVD player, I get the message "This DVD may not be played in your region." Is there anything I can do to be able to play it ?
Try this site:
Paul DS.
If you try and play a wrong-region DVD on a PC, it won't play - but you will get the option to change the region setting 5 times*, and then it stays locked at the last one.
*I'm sure that this can be reset by devious means, but I've never gone into it.The easiest way of beating this is to run a program in the background which makes the PC ignore the region coding (and other things too). 'DVD43' is a good choice.
As others have suggested, see if you DVD player can be set to 'region-free'. All three of mine were chosen to be free-able. Alternatively, treat yourself to a cheap £20 DVD player which ignores region coding. Many/most do - even if their spec says 'Region 2' (but try and find out first).
What the others said, plus:
Most players these days seem to have region free hacks. Note however there are two way of doing this. One is to place the drive into region 0 which in theory plays discs from any region. Some discs include code to specifically detect this and block play (sometimes called Region Coding Enhanced (RCE) discs). For these you need a true multi region drive that can be set to any region rather than "none" (or zero). So if purchasing, take care with what you are getting if you plan to buy many discs from other regions.
There are plenty of PC based tools for ripping and stripping region coding. Some are now no longer maintained alas. In this case I would actually recommend a paid for tool in the form of Slysoft's AnyDVD. This operates at a low level in the system and simply makes any disc inserted appear to the rest of the system like a region free unencrypted disc with no need to actually process it in anyway - it happens real time and transparently. Armed with a program like DVD shrink you could copy stright from one DVD to anther where the copy has all restrictions removed, and any content you don't want dropped. AnyDVD will also remove all other playback restrictions, and unprotect audio "CDs" that have been missold as CDs when in reality they are non standard discs that fail in all sorts of interesting ways. The HD version also works on BluRay.
Region coding appears to be dead. My sony arrived region free. So even the major supporters of region coding now ship region free players.
I didn't know fancy places like that sold region-free DVD players; I was under the impression you had to get them on-line (as I did) or from Aldi/Lidl when they have them.
I think if you use libdvdcss (on a GNU/Linux system, typically), you don't have to worry about the drive's region setting.
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