It says I can only change the DVD region on my computer 4 times. After that the region is fixed. It said installing windows or putting DVD drive in different computer will not change this.

I have a few questions now:
1. How can this change be permanent? Do they change something to the hardware of the DVD drive?
2. I purchased all my DVDs legally. They happen to be from different regions because I have lived in different regions. Is there any solution to play them all on the same computer?
3. Is it really legal that some software can change my hardware?

1. They record that in the firmware of your hardware (as far as I know).
2. There is, there are tools on the Internet to overwrite the firmware of your DVD ROM to make it read all regions.
3. It's a code in your hardware that does that really.

I have a few questions now:
1. How can this change be permanent? Do they change something to the hardware of the DVD drive?
2. I purchased all my DVDs legally. They happen to be from different regions because I have lived in different regions. Is there any solution to play them all on the same computer?
3. Is it really legal that some software can change my hardware?

yes the change is permenent. it changes a "prom" memory (hardware) the change is made inside the dvd drive not the computer.

there are programs on the net that can halp you. i have a cd that has that kind of software on it

i don't know if it's legal but if it wasn't then they wouldn't be doing it for long

i will look up that cd for you it's here somewhere

edit
the name of the cd is cd burner pro 2000
it is made by wingear software
the dvd region programs on it are:
dvd genie 3.81
dvd region killer 1.0
zone selector 4.1

i have no idea how to get these programs to you
any suggestions?

i don't know if it's legal but if it wasn't then they wouldn't be doing it for long
If it is legal then it shouldn't be. Would anyone have accepted region coding on audio CDs or even tapes for that matter, I don't think so. Imagine a car manufacturer stopping your car from working on tarred roads once you had used it off-road 5 times... :bugeye:

dvd region killer 1.0


I obtained regionkiller 2 from some not to be mentioned source.

It says:

To use this program, you need a DVD-ROM drive, that has no built-in region protection. In other words: DVD Region Killer will not work with RPC2 DVD drives!

So I don't think that it will work.

I tried another program (DVD region free). Also didn't work. Although it is supposed to work.

Try to find one that mentions the model of your dvd rom, i.e., google: your_dvdrom_model+region+free

try this email mrichter at cpl dot com

or this link http://www.regionfreedvd.net/
or this
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/region.html
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/DVD_Region_CSS_Free.htm

the reasons for regions (what a tongue twister)

DVD discs contain Regional Codes which can be used to prevent the playback of certain discs depending upon the geographical area it is played in. The various studios and home video companies lobbied to make sure this coding system was a required part of the current DVD standards, because they wish to control how their DVD titles are exported to other countries. (For example, while a recent film may already have played theatrically in the United States and been released to the home video market, that same film may not yet have opened in some European or Asian countries.) In most instances, discs manufactured in one region will usually only play on players that were manufactured in that same region - this means that discs bought or imported from Japan will not play on U.S. players, and vice versa. However, the regional coding system is entirely optional, and discs without Regional Codes will play on any player in any country.
-from laserrot.com

let me know if this helps

I tried the software in the last link, but it didn't work.

I don't know if I should use the 'flashing of the hardware'. It warned it could fuck up ypur DVD forever. But then again, they always give these doomsday warnings.

I accidently changed my region now to 2. Only 3 region changes left. And currently no region 1 DVD in 'da' house to test anything.

hmmm...

i found the last link by doing a google search on RPC2

the email i gave came from the help files of the cd i mentioned

as a last resort dvd drives are cheap

edit
i have no idea what "flash the hardware" means, except when it comes to the bios.

I believe the Regions were really meant for identify age restrictions in relationship to each region. For instance the UK and US cinema/Film and now game rating's are different, therefore it means the DVD contents themselves are packaged differently to reflect those ratings.

Admittedly some DVD's nowadays will attempt to contain all the legal copyright information in the language (and region) of choice.

As for why they wanted to stop people from swapping regions, well simply regions were also one attempt to deal with copyright piracy, of course there are many ways around it which does actually prove it was pretty useless for that.

In fact the only reason DVD's really use it now, is just to give it an inflated charge from the amount it costs to "Produce" things for each region.

http://www.geocities.com/neo_95100/flash.htm

edit
whats the brand of your dvd drive (toshiba, samsung, etc)

I found a file earlier. I am not sure I want to risk to flash it. Since it could ruin the drive.

Mmmmm, no. I wouldn't risk it either old man. Flashing the Firmware on your drive either inappropriately or else simply incorrectly will indeed comprehensively fuck the thing over in no short measure.

You're best bet here is to simply re-master the problematic disc's in question - using a DVD Decrypter, preferably DVD Decrypter (http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/software.htm) will strip out the region protection from the disc's in question by default making them playable on any region set DVD Drive.

You did not here this from me, I did not tell you. This message will self destruct in five seconds.....

I did not hear this from you ( ;) ), but I found this program called DVD decrypter which enables you to put the DVD on your harddrive after which you can actually change the region of the DVD! Amazing isn't it.

I'll bet this program will even let you write this DVD again on an empty DVD.

Now I just have to find out if I have a DVD burner capable of this. I assume most DVDs are dual layered and need 8GB of space?

The one I tested it on was only 4GB. (did I mention the fact I do not have any empty DVDs at hand right now?) But it plays fine from the harddrive and took about 5-10 minutes to put on the harddrive. Not really a long wait at all!

This message will self destruct by nuclear explosion in 666 seconds.

What's the best DVD medium? I think my drive can handle them all, including dual layer ones. But I was just in the store and didn't see any for sale. What about plain DVDs? DVD+r or -r?

Is there any difference?

Y'know old man, I've never had the foggiest.... Well, actually I do, but generally DVD+R's work fine so I just tend to stick with them.

About the rest, which I'm equally not going to tell y'anthing about. Because it may be nawty....

You're legal, purchased DVDs are indeed DVD 9's - Single Sided, Dual Layered and indeed, again, they store around 8.3 Gig's of data. You're average, run of the mill blank (DVD 5) DVD+R is Single Sided, Single Layered and stores only around 4.7 Gigs - too small, one would assume, to burn a full DVDs worth of loverly DVD and all its cleaver little bits and pieces.

But, turns out, not too small at all.

Now, y'can buy blank DVD 9's (Dual Layered DVD+/-R's) at around three times the cost of blank DVD 5 media if one wishes - if one does all one has to do is make an ISO Mode copy of the original master disk and burn straight on to your blank media. What you get as a result is a byte by byte copy with no data compression - perfect fidelity at a one to one ratio.

If, however, you make your copy via File Mode to your hard drive you copy the file data as actual files (as the name implies). Now you can then point standard burning software at the folder you copied to, such as Nero Burning ROM for example, and happily allow it to transcode the decrypted, copied DVD data down into MPEG2 format which is, basically, the video equivalent of MP3 - a compressed file format all DVD drives can read and decompress back up to its actual size for playing purposes - all of which means you're full original 8G DVD will fit quite happily on a DVD half the originals size.

Which is all deucedly cleaver bastard stuff, when y'thinks about it.... :)

Being as they're far cheaper and produce terribly little by way of loss of actual quality to the finished result I generally tend to favour the latter method - You may find that some of the video footage used in some of the featurettes, being as they are generally fairly low quality already compressed data to begin with, may look a tad bitty - we're talking clips used within documentaries, not the actual documentaries themselves. The main feature however, even a film as big and as wide as Lordy of The Rings, transcodes down beautifully and crisply as well as the sound and all the rest of it.

A Transcoder such as Clone DVD does a never less than perfect job, allows you to preview and select what languages, features, sub-tiles, commentaries, etc you wish to keep or not. Nero probably does this too but I find since it went posh it wants too much memory to successfully carry out what y'want it to do. A larger system may fare better. Personally I just stick with what works.

So, by all means try a dual layered blank DVD if one wishes (I'd stick with the +R's for that - some burners still seems to have problems with Dual Layered DVD-R's for some singular reason), but a tenner will get you a 25 cake of blank DVD 5's and basic affordability leads to far more in the realm of experimentation and trying things out is basically how you get to grips with most things...

Which is, as usual, probably far more information than you actually need but, hey, I'm not actually telling you any of this stuff so what does it matter...

Ooo, do download the DVD Decrypter Tutorial from Doom9 - brief but well worth the squint.

Have fun, and make sure you leave you're self with at least 6G of hard drive space available otherwise you'll have troubles burning.

All the best,

A ;)

I also came accros a program called DVD shrink. It can shrink your DVD to the size of a DVD-r or DVD+r single layered medium.

Now I did one test. My first ever DVD burned with such a shrunk file was done in quite a indirect way. I used DVD decrypter to make an ISO file on my harddrive (so I could play this DVD region free on a virtual mounted drive (daemon tools) with any software DVD player. I used this ISO to shrink instead of the original DVD to around 4GB. I subsequently burned that to a DVD+R medium. And it had a mistake on it. Some played ok, the main movie didn't.

Now I do not know where the mistake happened. I was surfing the web at the same time I was burning (never a good idea) and I actually never burned anything yet on this computer. So the mistake could have been anywhere.

I later made a DVD of a set of files I made with decrypter of a Finnish DVD I own that is so short it was only 4Gb to start with. Not an ISO. The files. I made it region free with decrypter and then started up Nero to burn a video DVD. Not quite the same process as before. This one was fine.

So I will try the shrink method once more to see if the problem was there, because it seems like a decent enough solution.

It's all kind of interesting because its all quite new to me.

(legal statement: I never copied anything. I just made this story up)

about your legal disclaimer
you purchased the dvd's legally
they are yours. you can make 1,000,000 copies if you want
you just can not give them away or sell them.
i feel that what you are doing and why is perfectly legal and justified.

about your legal disclaimer
you purchased the dvd's legally
they are yours. you can make 1,000,000 copies if you want
you just can not give them away or sell them.
i feel that what you are doing and why is perfectly legal and justified.

Well thats the problem, You might have bought the disc, however you've only actually bought a "Licence" for the copyright. The "Copyright" and Intellectual property as a whole is seen as worth far more than a single CD.

This is why if you make copies you're actually undermining it's worth and of course some people want it classed as theft. Originally the law was/is that you can make a copy of an original as long as it's only for your use. (I believe the same can be said with Patents, where you can actually make someones Design into an item but only for your own use and you're not allowed to Reverse Engineer their design)

However with the increase over the past couple of years in online file sharing which is constantly being caught sharing copyrighted material there are actually people out there trying to take away that privilege of making a copy.

spurious is doing what he is doing so that he can watch his legally purchased dvd's without haveing to buy a dvd drive to match the region.
i feel he is justified. spurious has no ulterior motives he just wants to watch his movies. and i understand your point stryder.

Suprious, to change the DVD region on a PC DVD drive you will need to download a flash program (not Macromedia, 'flash' as in memory flashing) sepcific to your hardware. This will alter the software ON the DVD drive itself so that region codes are not tested. The software you willl be downloading will be third party and very dodgy.

Beware: you can ruin your DVD drive by doing this. The one time I tried, the flash program overwrote my DVD's firmware with something that stopped it from working. You cannot repair the drive, as successful operation of the firmware is required to update it. I just smashed it to bits with a golf club with my mates when I realised the situation was unrecoverable. My Drive's model number was on the list of suposed supported drives for that program.

Now I do not know where the mistake happened. I was surfing the web at the same time I was burning (never a good idea) and I actually never burned anything yet on this computer. So the mistake could have been anywhere.

Mmmm, surfing the net, carrying on with work, picking your nose... They can all, equally, have a detrimental effect on burning. It's always best to keep your system as occupied with the main task to hand as possible and leave everything else till you're done.

Shrink DVDs not actually at all bad, got a lot of very good features to it. Freeware, if I remember right. Try making your initial rip with DVD Decrypter using file mode instead of ISO. Don't bother with compressing anything before hand, just copy the files straight and let Shrink do its stuff.

You'll find each and every DVD has its own little wrinkles, structure protection, variations of copy-protection etc, but if Nero's handling the copied files okay and actually doing the business at least y'know you've got something which works.

Ooo, and by the by. It's illegal to copy a DVD full stop. The back-up and archive defence went out of the window earlier this year putting the last remaining software companies dedicated to the purpose of legal copying out of business one and for all - DVD Decrypter, for example, no longer does what it once did, so bear in mind the latest and most up-to-date software is not necessarily the best option when fishing around for gear.

Have fun. ;)

Ooo, and by the by. It's illegal to copy a DVD full stop. The back-up and archive defence went out of the window earlier this year putting the last remaining software companies dedicated to the purpose of legal copying out of business one and for all -

I changed my legal disclaimer accordingly. ;)

There will always be a haven for copying though. If one country allows a corporation to stop a program being used, another country will probably allow it. This is one of the bonuses of having countries that just don't get along with each other for those that want a copy.

However the problem is that for you to use that software legally, you have to use it in their country.

I changed my legal disclaimer accordingly. ;)

Yes, I read. Rather Presidential I though. Splendid stuff. :)


There will always be a haven for copying though. If one country allows a corporation to stop a program being used, another country will probably allow it. This is one of the bonuses of having countries that just don't get along with each other for those that want a copy.

However the problem is that for you to use that software legally, you have to use it in their country.

Well, indeed and on on both scores. We're living in an interesting age, one wherein technological proliferation is advancing at an almost unilateral rate - rather than being the prelude exclusively of merely the manufacturer, the consumer has access to technology on a par with commercial interest. Interesting times indeed.

I can't wait to see what legislature comes next...

sony proposes to....

...give consumers a cash payment of $7.50 US and a special code allowing them to download one additional album from a list of more than 200 Sony titles. The second would allow people to download three additional albums from the list.

which will compensate for......

According to court papers, the MediaMax and XCP software programs disabled any firewall and anti-spyware protection programs previously installed on the consumer's computer. Manual attempts to remove the software, which works only on Windows PCs, can disable the PC's optical drive.

cost of doing business with mafia types, i guess.

with well over 500 odd movies and 85 gigs of mp3's, all d/l, this is one mofo they aint gonna shakedown

:) .. Yes, I was reading about this proposed stunt the other day. Prompted something of a rue smile I must say.

First rule of business - sell at whatever price the market is prepared to pay. Patently, someone up there got their sums woefully wrong. Were this not the case the modern day consumer would not elect, wholesale, to do as you so enviably describe and pile up on all the downloadables.

We're looking at an industry that has invested, and will continue to "invest", money hand over-fist ostensibly securing protective rights over their produce via both legislature and software development at a cost of millions and can sanely wonder why formally profitable sales markets such as DVD and Music are taking a hit - if they actually spent less on lawyers, management and middle-men and actually produced instead product that justified the retail cost to the consumer, perhaps these corporations would actually end up as being businesses once more and actually earn a living for a change instead of merely expecting it as if a right.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bc/Home_taping_is_killing_music.png

courtesy of bpi ;)

funny thing was that after observing the retaliatory tactics employed by the industry, my remorse vanished. the rhetoric is outrageous and mind numbing in its stupidity as well

dvd regions provide absolutly no security for the movie industry whatsoever.
in my opinion it's to make money, and more money, and even more money.
go spurious!!

Interestingly I wanted to put DVDdecrypter on another computer because mine is temporarily down (ordered a new CPU fan and have to wait for it), and macrovision has bought the program and requested most sites to take DVDdecrypter of the site for downloading.

A crackdown on DVD copying by brute money approach?

Absolutely. And this is why we archive and store things away for rainy days like "progress". Amen.

Try http://doom9.net/