Region free? - Samsung HT-TZ212

[Lovinda]

I tried the hack to change from R2 to make my DVD player region free. After entering the hack, at least I now can play R1 DVDs! But still can't play my Thai VCDs. Does it mean my Samsung isn't yet region free?? Or do I have to enter another hack to play Asian VCD?

[jman98]

VCDs don't use region code. Your problem is that the firmware on your DVD player doesn't support VCD playback. Your only hope is that either someone will produce hacked firmware with VCD support or that you can talk Samsung into creating such firmware. The odds of either happening are quite low. Hacks almost never allow VCD support. I've heard of such, but it's not common. It's basically a firmware issue and that has nothing to do with hacks. Hacks only turn on VCD support when the firmware actually supports it but for some reason it is made so that such support can be toggled on/off and almost none of the manufacturers do that. 99% of the time a manufacture will either write the firmware to support VCD playback or they will skip it. Having the firmware support it but then turning it off deliberately is insane.

[redwudz]

Probably better in our DVD & Blu-ray Players Forum. Moving you.

And welcome to our forums.

[Lovinda]

Thank you for your swift answer. Good to be enlightened on this issue. I still have my old (and much cheaper!) DVD player, which can play VCDs, so guess I should try connect it to my Samsung home theater system so I can still be able to enjoy all my Thai karaoke and VCDs.

[Lovinda]

Probably better in our DVD & Blu-ray Players Forum. Moving you.

And welcome to our forums.

Thanks for welcoming me . I'm on another hack site too, but no chance of getting the appropriate hack to make my DVD player region free there! And I found help for my problem already on my first day here! Thanks, VideoHelp.com!

[johns0]

You can always extract the vcd and burn as dvd-video.

[Lovinda]

Never thought of that. Do I need a special program for that?

[KBeee]

Or if it's anything like my Samsung (which also plays AVI), you can extract the mpg from the VCD and rename it from my_video.mpg to my_video.avi and the machine will play it.

[Lovinda]

Ok, thanks dear. I will try that!

[redwudz]

One note: If you do convert a VCD to a DVD, you need to change the audio sampling rate from 44.1Khz to the DVD standard 48Khz. But many programs can do that for you automatically. The VCD framesize works fine on a DVD.

[Lovinda]

Thanks, I will bear that in mind.