Thinkpads Forum

Hi everyone,

Just discovered this little gem I thought I'd share.

VLC Player will enable region-free playback of any DVD _only in an older DVD drive_ but not a newer one.

"VLC is one of the free software and open source DVD players that ignores DVD region coding on RPC-1 firmware drives, making it a region-free player. However, it does not do the same on RPC-2 firmware drives." -- From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player

I have 2 DVD ultrabay drives - one is a flat-bezel one that came with my T60p. The other is an older chamfered bezel one that came with a T43. They are both set to region 4.

VLC will play region 1 DVDs on the chamfered-bezel drive. The same DVD gives "unable to read file" errors in the newer flat bezel drive.

I hope this is helpful to someone. DVD region coding sucks big time for customers.

Both those drives work in the T60p, X60 tablet dock, and T43.

Giday Zer*;

VLC can do lots more !!! (maybe read the user manuals and you might be suprised!)

Also WINDVD Player that comes STD in TP & T60X series machines (with latest updates) can do same - Play ALL REGION DVD's - unlike the retail version of same.

Cheers ...

I thought RPC-1 is essentially region free. So saying that VLC can play all regions on RPC-1 drives is saying nothing.

Edit: I take that back. I understand that some software actually enforces region encoding of its own if it sees an RPC-1 drive.

"Also WINDVD Player that comes STD in TP & T60X series machines (with latest updates) can do same - Play ALL REGION DVD's - unlike the retail version of same."

That didn't work for me.

I tried playing a region 1 DVD with standard WinDVD and VLC on a thinkpad with a Region 4 DVD drive (the newer flat bezel one) and it did not work.

WinDVD says "please change the region coding of your drive" and you can only change this 3 more times etc.
VLC says "Error unable to read file".

As soon as I swapped for the older driver it worked.

Hence I thought this would be a useful tip. Guess not.

I haven't played back a dvd in a while, but the issue goes away if you rip the dvd, ever since dvd was broken ripping the dvd gave you free reign over the region code issue.