T42p DVD Drive Region Free?

[nacy333]

Well, so far it seems like it is so far...as it works with both Region 1 and 3 DVDs.

Upon getting my T42p (2373-KTU) I popped in a Region 3 DVD just for the hell of it and opened it up using Windows Media Player. To my surprise it played just fine! Testing things out a bit I popped in a few Region 1 DVD's and noticed that they seem to play just fine (all using Windows Media Player).

Checking to see if the Region became locked in after that I popped back in my Region 3 DVD and it seemed to play just fine (though it will not play on any other of the 4 DVD players in the house).

I've checked the properties of my DVD player (its the M a t s u s h i t a DVD-RAM UJ-812 DVD burner) and the DVD Region tab says that It's Region 1 with 4 changes remaining. This has not changed at all since playing serveral Region 1 and my one Region 3 DVD (which is the legitimate Region 3 release of the Japanese movie Ping-Pong for anyone that's curious).

I've reformatted my laptop several times now (trying to figure out how to make multiple partitions) and it still plays the Region 3 DVD. The only thing however, is that I have not used the WinDVD Player at all for fear that it would somehow 'lock' the DVD player to Region 1 and disable my ability to play Region 3 dvd's (at least the one I have anyway). Yes, I realize that Windows Media Player uses the WinDVD codec in order to play the DVDs.

Using Nero InfoTool I can still see that the drive itself is RPC II and shows the region code as 1 with 4 changes still left.

My question is this: If I use WinDVD to play my DVD's is there any way that it will set the drive so that I may not be able to play DVD's from Regions other than Region 1?

[sktn77a]

Well, If WinDVD somehow changed the RPC-II setting on your drive, it should show up in the drive properties. Older RPC-1 drives (eg the Thinkpad 600E 2X DVD drive) used RPC-I (no hardware protection code, just handled in Windows) so reloading your OS restored it to 5 changes. Can't do that with RPC-II - after 5 hardware changes you're locked at the last region - SOL forever!