Entertainment For Lively Minds
Laptop help/question please!
Posted by Blue Sky on 30 December 2010 - 11:33am.
Boring self serving post. Sorry.
I use my Dell laptop to watch my DVD's amongst other things which is all well and good.
But it will only play a certain region unless you request the region to change which is also well and good.
Except I only have 4 times that I can change the region and then I'm stuck with whatever was the last choice.
So at present I'm watching all I can on the current setting before I have to change region yet it all seems so silly.
I'm not doing anything dodgy watching my own bought DVD's so not sure why this restriction is in place on a modern laptop.
So is there a way round this?
Thankyou.
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Same problem on a mac...
.... but I'm not sure if you can't rip your dvd using handbrake to a format you can then watch in your laptop. I seem to remember having done this with Storefront Hitchcock which is a US region format. A bit longwinded but I think it works (but I could be wrong).
It's paid
But AnyDVD should do it. Basically it removes the region protection quietly in the background and you don't have to worry about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnyDVD
Any DVD
I have been using this for a couple of years and can fully recommend it for what you need.
The AnyDVD option seems the go here. Quick question though....
In regards to the update options offered what's best?
Is it worthwhile paying for the lifetime update?
Maybe just choose the 1 year update as who knows what will happen in 12 months?
Thanks
They do update frequently
I think I'd say go for lifetime if you had a Blu-Ray drive, as I presume they'll be buggering about with the protection on that for ages, but if it's just DVDs, maybe not.
They are stopping...
... the lifetime subscriptions VERY soon, perhaps even after today (NYE) so get in quick if you want one.
Its a great piece of software which has only failed to rip 2 DVDs in the 4 years I've been using it. I was lucky enough to buy it when the upgrades were ALL free for life , but they've gradually tightened the rules.
oops - "locked table" thing
Thankyou one & all (esp. itf & Vulpes Vulpes)
This has been extremely helpful.
Can't you just change it to Region 0 (zero)
which means 'Region agnostic' and will allow you to play any disc you want?
No.
That's how it used to work in the golden days of the late nineties - you reflashed your drive to be "region 0", or flashed it with what we called an RPC1 firmware, which allowed unlimited changes.
Essentially the disk said "I'm region 2!" and your drive said "Me too!". And all was well.
Because of staggered US and UK cinema releases and increased importing of US DVDs that were still in cinemas or just out, RPC2 firmware came in on the hardware side, which was more stringent on the number of changes, and then RCE came out on the software side. That broke the "region 0" idea.
At that point, the disk said "I'm region 2", the drive said "Me too!" and the disk went "Nope, just kidding, I'm region 1 but I've got this nice error screen that's Region 2, you can show that!" and failed to play.
You can read about this stuff at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code#Region_Code_Enhanced
Also to avoid confusion, a Region 0 DISC is one with no region coding.
It's been years since I've struggled with this stuff, but you might find an RPC-1 firmware for your specific drive. Then use VLC to playback the DVDs, which ignores regions for RPC-1 drives only.
If your laptop is even vaguely modern, the odds of it being an RPC-1 drive are nil.
NB : Working some of this stuff out might take you to the underbelly on the internet. So do your googling in Firefox, and do it with the NoScript extension - and have your antivirus up to date. Last thing you want is some free gremlins.
But.
Every time I've picked up a DVD player at R*cher S*unds they've given me a xeroxed sheet with the button sequence to 'Region 0' the thing. And I don't mean in the 90s, I mean in the last few years. These sequences can easily be searched out on the WWW. Surely there's a similar thing available for internal drives that go in lappys?
I confess I haven't been bothered to research this, as it hasn't been something I've needed to do (with either of the DELL lappys I have), but it strikes me as likely that the OEM makers of lappy DVD drives probably use the same or very similar ROMs in their drives...
I think it's Region 0 that's the problem here
I presume your sheet from Richer Sounds tells you how to set it to a specific region? Setting it to "0" shouldn't work any more. Maybe it works for the majority and they gave up on RCE? It's been a while since I've cared about this stuff.
Internal drives are a different kettle of fish and involve buggering around with firmware or running a layer of software between the drive and the player (as in AnyDVD), unfortunately. The region is hard coded to only be changed 5 times. But yes, I'm sure judicious googling of the model number will give you a solution.
The photocopied instructions are specifically
to set 'Region 0', rather than to set a specific geographical region. I've had two such sheets given to me, one for a player I bought for my parents about 6 or so years ago, and one for the Phillips device I use myself. This latter machine was purchased only about 3 years ago, specifically because it also plays back jpg, mpg, avi, divx, xvid and wmv files direct from disc, from CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R or CDVR-whatever-you-like. It seems to me that some manufacturers, at least, have realised that flexibility and end-user choice are more important to their customers than half-assed attempts at keeping the rights holders' lawyers in beer and fags!
I think situation differs
between computers and av market drives.
Former have got much more difficult, even with software, because of hardware restrictions cf itf; latter a much more nod-and-a-wink scenario, cf Vulpes' experience with Richer.
you may need to...
have a google for the code needed for your particular model player/laptop to re-program [via settings menu] a change to Region 0, as noted above.
It's a market control thing by the corporates - date of first DVD release is usually staggered across regions. Will inevitably disappear due to simplicity of getting around it. also some players now going on sale without the compromised settings.
What kind of Dell laptop do you have, Blue Sky?
And what do you use to play the discs? Do you use Windows Media Player, or something else?
I'm using two different Dell models, one several years old, one only 2 years old, and I've never encountered any Region issues when playing DVDs on either of them.
My first instinct would be for you to download the free VLC player from here: http://www.vlcmediaplayer.org/
Try playing one of your problematic discs with that and tell us what happens.
Hi Vulpes, I have an Inspiron 1564
I speak as a IT black hole but it has an i5 CPU if that helps.
I watch DVD's on Windows Media Player.
A program called Roxio always announces itself but I don't use it.
I think I'll download the VLC player.
I shall let you know.
Thanks
Doubtful
VLC will do the trick on older drives, but if it's an i5 that's a modern laptop.
Be careful not to hit your region change limit, either. Or at least to make the last change to the region where you have the most discs! (2 being UK)
That's bang up to date!
Very interested to hear what VLC makes of your DVDs!
VLC does not like my DVDs
It will play the DVDs I can play but the others are pixalated.
I thankyou Vulpes Vulpes and itf for your time.
I shall continue upwards and onwards with my viewing until such a time.......
Bugger
I imagined that would be the case, but I'm still sorry. If it's any consolation many of the supermarket cheapy DVD players are easily made region free, and are in some cases surprisingly decent.
As I say, AnyDVD will solve your woes, but I think it's pricey.
Worth a try!
What's weird is that the newest Dell lappy I own doesn't have this issue at all, and it's only 2 years old at most.
If it were mine, I'd be digging deep into the forums and suchlike that hover around the OEM DVD drive manufacturer's websites to look for a hack, as I'd bet good money that one does exist, but I'd pay close attention to the advice elsewhere here about taking great care while doing so.
I did a quick search
And didn't want to visit any of the results Google returned as they all looked like poison. I suspect it's quite easily sorted but will need a firmware flash to an RPC-1 equivalent. That would mean all the region stuff would be controlled in software, not hardware.
Use TOR in a VM
and laugh at anything poisonous!
Personal choice
But I'm a firefox with noscript inside Sandboxie man myself. ;-)
Try
There's two other downloads you can try -
GOM player
and
PowerDVD
what?
Is this a joke that I'm not getting? Is this becoming a techy site?
Unguarded comments
If you make an unguarded comment at the wrong moment about the wrong thing and it's often very tetchy round here!
Erm
No, it's a regular site on which someone asked a techie question and people tried to help. You didn't have to read the thread, you know...
If it helps, it's about those shiny discs that films come on, and that's squarely in the Word reader remit.
No
It's just got a little bit tetchy though but.
And anyway
http://www.wikio.co.uk/sources/www.wordmagazine.co.uk/blog-ulgU
says that the site is 18.85% about high tech ;-)
Mac
Anyone have solutions for this on a Mac?