Thinkpads Forum

My son wants me to buy a DVD set from a British TV Series -- Primeval Series II. (We both like Series I). I can only find the set in region 2 format. Will my T61 be able to play it? Or am I locked into region 1?

A brand new DVD drive can change region setting about 5 times before it is permanently locked.

There are people patching the DVD drive firmware to remove this limitation. If your drive is on the list you can change the region unlimited times.

Another way is to backup the DVDs, removing the region coding in the process.

I have always been mad as hell about this. Presumably this measure is designed to make DVD piracy harder, and the truth is that it does nothing of the sort. The only achievement of such a policy is make the lives of people like the OP harder, and paradoxically, stymie sells of DVDs!

msb0b wrote:Another way is to backup the DVDs, removing the region coding in the process.

This software utility could be used.

the main idea is to control it's release in other countries. Most movies come out in the US first then some months later they go to theaters there. If everyone bought the DVD then there would be no money to be made in the movie theatre business in Europe and elsewhere.

You can make double the money that way or more money than if they were just on DVD. You make money at theatres (again) and then some more in DVDs.

It is a pain in the butt but you know how that works... more money for them... more agony for us.

There are any number of software solutions to this problem. A Google search will reveal dozens. AnyDVD comes to mind because I use it. It works, but there are plenty of others as well.

If you buy the DVD's locally, it will not present a Region problem that I know of. I buy British DVD's all the time at the local HMV in Toronto. I don't perceive a problem. ... JDH

Hi,

Why don't you use DVD Shrink soft to take region off
It's free and very easy

Regards,

A cheap, Multi- region DVD player may be the best answer to the problem.

You would, of course, need to watch the DVDs on a TV and not a computer.

That may be good family time, and a such, a bonus.

Thank you guys, for the pointers. I did manage do get in some Google searching, and I found SlySoft's AnyDVD. There is also the DVDFab software that peak2peak pointed me to. One of those products should do the job. I'll just pick one and buy it.

Jdhurst, I have no local source for the DVDs. Season 1 is out for Region 1. But I want Season 2. So I either wait and hope for an eventual release of Season 2 for Region 1, or I have a friend in the U.K. ship me over a Season 2 DVD now, which of course would then be in Region 2.

My son's friend is also into this series. He was telling my son that his PC let him switch back and forth. I fear the kid was using up his limited number of region code switches. I warned him that might be the case.

I am with Rmendoza in that the whole region code thing makes me angry. I try not to think about it much. Life is too short.

Stan wrote:A cheap, Multi- region DVD player may be the best answer to the problem.

You would, of course, need to watch the DVDs on a TV and not a computer.

That may be good family time, and a such, a bonus.

LOL! Thought of the multi-region DVD player. Our TV is a 20-some year-old, 19-inch model. My son and I both prefer watching together on the laptop. As a bonus, we have to sit close .

I'm actually planning to just get rid of the TV sometime soon. We don't get any TV signal at all in the house, and we don't pay for cable. Everything we watch is either from DVD or VHS tape. The only thing we use the TV for these days is as a monitor for my son's Wii. I could buy him a nice, LCD panel that would consume less electricity and look better into the bargain.

Whatever ther original purpose, it clearly doesn't work anymore. As soon as DVDs are released here (or elsewhere, if the movie is not American), people all over the world have access to bootleg DVDs. But the companies' objective, as ShoTT aptly put it, is to screw people over as much as possible, and in their drive to do this they don't realize that they are shooting themselves on the foot.

In any event, I agree with the multi-region dvd player idea. The only problem is that I don't think you can find those in US stores. I am lucky that I live close to the border, so I can buy one.

Software does the job of dezoning any dvd on a computer's dvd rom player. Anydvd is among the best known. I use it myself. What such a utility does is to interecept the request to see how many times a zone change has been done, so the dvd plays.

Unfortunately, for dvd players it is more complicated. Some mfrs permit dezoning after inputting a code on the remote. Others don't even allow this.

The reason for the zone system dates back to the origins of the dvd players. At the time hollywood staged new movie releases at different periods of time in other countries, so the zoning was to prevent flooding a market with the dvd of a movie before it has hit the cinemas. Since then, new movies are mostly released simultaneously in all major markets because the promotion requires most of the cast, and it wouldn't be practical to have different promotions at different times since the actors might not be available.

-er

DvdIdle does the same thing region wise as DVDFab and is a lot cheaper. Sold by the same people who make DVDFab

the most basic solution is to use a video player like VLC, which completely ignores region codes.

not reason to mess around with the dvds or the drive, just put the dvd in and play. vlc is nifty anyway, there is hardly a format it doesn't recognize without using strange codec packs or whatnot. oh, and it is free.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

mfg
wulfman

One important thing to remember: If the T61 have a Matshita drive you will not be able to use any software to get around the region lock. The only way is to find a RPC1 firmware or use software like dvdfab or anydvd on another computer with anything but a Matshita drive to create a copy where the region lock is removed.

More info to be found here: http://club.cdfreaks.com/637240-post2.html

so, I can get around my hl-dt-st dvd ram gsa-u10n with software?

josh999 wrote:so, I can get around my hl-dt-st dvd ram gsa-u10n with software?

Assuming you are talking about making the drive region free then yes you can use programs like anydvd, dvdfab, dvd shrink and several others. Which one is the best depend what you want to do. If you want to be able to read DVD's without have to worry about the region anydvd is really good. If you want to make region free backups and convert from dvd9 to dvd5 and stuff like that dvdfab and dvd shrink might be better options.

You mean the software mentioned above won't work with a Matshita drive. If not, why not?

ooohh just read the link above...so know now.....

Which T61's use Matshita drives?

Download DVD43, DVDshrink and IfoEdit for free. Rip the DVDs on your computer with DVDshrink (with DVD43 running in the background - this will allow you to rip encrypted DVDs). Edit the necessary files with IfoEdit (switching the identifiers from PAL to NTSC) and then burn a new DVD with Nero, or whatever software grabs you. This will give you a region free NTSC DVD wich will play in any US DVD player (including the computer, of course).

Anybody have experience with Magic DVD Ripper or Magic DVD Copier? They were mentioned in a forum where somebody was having problems with DVD43.
DenTP4rm

No, but if DVD43 doesn't work (I've never had a problem with it) you can use "DVD Fab Decrypter" - rips and decrypts the DVD but doesn't compress it (you can use DVD shrink to do that). It's free also.