HELP-newbie questions concerning region hacks etc?

[SaenOne]

once i found out that dvd writers aren't all that expensive anymore i have been thinking about getting one. but it seems like it's kinda hard to decide which one would best fit my needs.

So I was wondering if there are DVD writers that come region-free? any recommendations?

What I basically want to do is burn that one or other DVD (d'oh) and especially watch the few american DVD's (RC1) that I got which won't work on my standalone dvd player

[thor300]

All DVD writers can write regionfree, but not read all regions original DVDs. You can however make most DVD writers regionfree, by upgrading firmware or using some regionfree apps, this concernes only reading, not writing. Once you got a DVD writer you can easily "copy" your Region1 DVDs to regionfree for playing on your standalone DVD player.

[SaenOne]

thanks for the reply!
one other thing though. are there any dvd writers that also read EVERY kind of DVD regarding region code??

[thor300]

Reading all kind of regions is more a software issue, you can do it with DVD Decypter and many others, regardless of hardware. That means you will have to rip the DVDs to the harddrive before being able to play them. If you only want playback you can use for example DVD Region Killer (or update firmware). Normal DVD-ROM players can do the same, you dont need a DVD writer just for that.

[code65536]

Go to http://www.rpc1.org/

You'll find all that you need there.