Viewing Region 1 DVD's on Region 2 Drive

[rvman]

I have a friend who lives and Europe and cannot play his region code 1 DVDs on his laptop that he bought in Europe. He doesn't want to be be bothered with temporarily ripping them to his computer which would get rid of the region code. He's not very tech savy so he doesn't want to hassle with firmware upgrades. I was wondering if AnyDVD will allow you to watch another region code DVD without having to either copy it to the hard drive or make a copy. I've read the description of it, but I wasn't quite sure.

I saw another program, DVD Region+CSS Free, that should work, at least most of the time, but I've read good things on this forum about AnyDVD and thought that would be a better choice if actually performs this function.

[Krispy Kritter]

That is the purpose of AnyDVD,

[waheed]

All dvd players including for PCs and Laptop come with the ability to change the Region five times. If your friend wants to use it for Region 1 DVDs only, then he/she can change it to Region 1 without the purchase of any software.

[jman98]

waheed is quite right, but I want to explain in detail what this means because your friend probably doesn't want to do it. DVDs on PCs have 5 changes allowed to them. Your friend can insert the DVD and it will ask "Do you want to change the region?" Suppose your friend says "Yes". OK, now the DVD player is Region 1. The next time your friend tries to play a DVD not from Region 1, the same question will be asked. Suppose your friend wants to go back to Region 2. That's change 2. The important thing to note is that on change 5, the drive locks on that region. So if you did
Region 2 -> Region 1 (change 1)
Region 1 -> Region 2 (change 2)
Region 2 -> Region 1 (change 3)
Region 1 -> Region 2 (change 4)
Region 2 -> Region 1 (change 5 and lock on Region 1)
your drive is now locked at Region 1. It's better to just use AnyDVD than to fool around with changing the region on the drive.

[Noahtuck]

You can get free tools in the "Tools" section to play diff. region dvd's or you can search for a a region free firmware and flash your drive like i do mine with no need to pay $$ for anything

[Abond]

...no need to pay $$ for anything

Only for new drive, if you screw the flashing :P

[waheed]

...no need to pay $$ for anything

Only for new drive, if you screw the flashing :P

I believe the OP mentioned he doesn't want to hassle with firmware upgrades etc...

[FulciLives]

Firmware upgrades aren't that difficult to do in fact I thought they were pretty "easy" these days.

*shrug*

I've never had a problem and over the years I've flashed "unofficial" firmware on 4 different DVD drives (some burners some just plain rom read only drives).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman