watching american dvds

riddler · 20 Apr 2006 at 13:08

well...i just came back from florida and ive bought some dvd's i watched them fine over there and i'm about to attempt it over here on 3 things...

1 XBOX360 (i gather it wont work here after some forum searching)

2 P.C

3 PS2 / DVD PLAYER

i know we are in region 2 but isn't there discs to convert regions on the ps2 and most dvd players allow all regions to be played?

Scam · 20 Apr 2006 at 13:19

Most DVD players play all regions regardless of their setting. To get them to do so you can do a variety of things. A really old one we had involved opening it up and soldering, but i think nowadays you can simply go through to hidden menus or some fancy work with the remote to change it. You're best off simply Googling for your DVD player/product number and there's bound to be a guide somewhere.

PC DVD players are harder and involve updating your drives firmware to a region-free set then using a utility such as DVD Region Killer to run every time you play a DVD. It's a pain, so i'd look into sorting your DVD player, it's bound to just be a hidden option somewhere.

daz.p · 20 Apr 2006 at 13:21

try this for ps2
DVD Region X

Sic · 20 Apr 2006 at 13:24

try this lovely piece of software for your PC. plays any region DVD i've thrown at it. it even plays the ones i put in the drive!

loopstah · 20 Apr 2006 at 18:49

Search the web for your DVD player and your bound to find the code to make it region free as most are multi region capable these days.

Scam · 20 Apr 2006 at 19:34

Sic said:
try this lovely piece of software for your PC. plays any region DVD i've thrown at it. it even plays the ones i put in the drive!

I'm almost certain that any amount of software wont work unless your firmware is already region-free

Sic · 20 Apr 2006 at 19:40

Scam said:
I'm almost certain that any amount of software wont work unless your firmware is already region-free

i'm 100% certain that my dvd drive in my laptop isn't region free, and it runs region 1,2,3 and 4 perfectly through VLC, whilst not running in the native OSX DVD player

atpbx · 20 Apr 2006 at 21:17

Sic said:
i'm 100% certain that my dvd drive in my laptop isn't region free, and it runs region 1,2,3 and 4 perfectly through VLC, whilst not running in the native OSX DVD player

Regardless, most drives will switch region 4 times before locking to the last region selected.

All you need to do is flash the firmware on your DVD drive and it will be region free.

Werewolf · 20 Apr 2006 at 21:29

atpbx, some of the software solutions get round it somehow, i'm not sure how though.

I personally buy drives I know can be made RPC1 (no region code), and use DVDGenie (freeware/shareware) with PowerDVD (i've got dozens of copies lying around from various hardware bundles).

With regards to watching different region DVD's on UK consoles I beleive their is a disk that does it for the PS2.

I don't think there is a way to do it with the 360 yet, and it seems unlikely that there will be a way for a while, if ever without modding it (which we can't talk about on the forums).