Cannot play Zone 1 disc on my Sony dvp-sr100 DVD player

[lea]

Help, please!

[yoda313]

You'll have to provide more information.

Is the disc scratched? You may be able to repair it with one of those disc repair systems.

Can it play in a computer dvd rom player? If so you may be able to rip it to the computer and burn another copy (only if you own the actual disc of course - copying is for personal copies only!)

[lea]

No, I think the problem is that the DVD player is Zone 2 and the disc is Zone 1. But can't I have the player programmed to play all zones/regions?

[Ai Haibara]

I haven't seen anything for making this player region-free (though I only checked VideoHelp's DVD Players list, and not a general Google search, or anything like that. But since it's a Sony player, the chances of there being a region hack or code (especially one that you don't require special equipment to perform) are rather unlikely.

[lea]

Thanks. So that means that I'll have to put off watching Nurse Jackie untill it's available on Zone 2 DVD...

[lowellriggsiam]

Of course if you or a friend have the technology you could copy the DVD and make one that is region free.

[lea]

OK, that's interesting - I didn't know that. How do you make a copy that is region free off one that is region 1 only?

[jman98]

Ripping a DVD to your hard drive removes all region coding, so the rip can then be burned to a new disc and it will be region free. However, this process assumes that you have a DVD player and a TV capable of displaying the video format (PAL or NTSC) of the DVD in question. Since you seem to be a native English speaker and you're in region 2, I'll guess that you're in the UK. The odds are extraordinarily high that your DVD player and TV are capable of playing back NTSC DVDs with no problem. Post here for help if that's not true, but for now I think it's safe to assume you can play any NTSC DVDs you may make.

The Guides section at the top left has a lot of guides on copying DVDs. Here's one guide
http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/50/26/
The old DVD Decrypter (if you can find it) and DVD Shrink programs were pretty easy to use, but they haven't been updated in years. Some region 1 DVDs now use a type of copy protection that they don't understand, hence why I pointed you to a guide that uses DVDFab (it gets updated regularly to deal with the new copy protection methods).

[jman98]

Ripping a DVD to your hard drive removes all region coding, so the rip can then be burned to a new disc and it will be region free. However, this process assumes that you have a DVD player and a TV capable of displaying the video format (PAL or NTSC) of the DVD in question. Since you seem to be a native English speaker and you're in region 2, I'll guess that you're in the UK. The odds are extraordinarily high that your DVD player and TV are capable of playing back NTSC DVDs with no problem. Post here for help if that's not true, but for now I think it's safe to assume you can play any NTSC DVDs you may make.

The Guides section at the top left has a lot of guides on copying DVDs. Here's one guide
http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/50/26/
The old DVD Decrypter (if you can find it) and DVD Shrink programs were pretty easy to use, but they haven't been updated in years. Some region 1 DVDs now use a type of copy protection that they don't understand, hence why I pointed you to a guide that uses DVDFab (it gets updated regularly to deal with the new copy protection methods).

[jman98]

Sorry for the double post. Error on my part.

[lea]

Thanks for your help. I'm actually from Israel. My TV should be PAL, but it's not that old, so I'd guess it could play NTSC as well. I'll try to see if I can burn the CD and let you know if it helped. Thanks again.

[lea]

OK. It seems that my TV is PAL/SECAM only.
I guess the region 1 disc is NTSC.
Is there a way to convert this?

[jman98]

OK. It seems that my TV is PAL/SECAM only.
I guess the region 1 disc is NTSC.
Is there a way to convert this?

Probably not. But most region 2 DVD players should have a video output setting you can change. The default value may be "ANY" or "MULTI". If so, change that to PAL. There is some small chance that your DVD player can't convert NTSC output to PAL video and some small chance that you may have a TV that can't display NTSC input, but that is rather unusual.

We have guides on NTSC to PAL conversions if you want to try, but note that doing so will destroy the menus. Honestly, if it's something you think you'll need to do more than once or twice, you're better off just buying a DVD player capable of converting between PAL and NTSC. And I would not recommend Sony or Samsung. Philips generally can do this cheaply.