limited period DVD multi-region

satchmo

My brother recently got a Compaq Presario 1685 laptop with multi-region DVD player, which he was very happy with. Until he discovered that the player only stays multi-region for a certain number of region changes (something crap like 3 times), after which it locks itself into one region.

Needless to say he's fairly ****ed off. One of the main reasons he bought a laptop with a DVD player was so he could watch any region.

Is there any way around this? I've heard of DVD drives being fairly easy to mess with, although laptop drives are probably a different story. Any help would be appreciated.

Chubby

Yeah, go download a ultility called the "dvd genie". It will enable any region an unlimited number of times for most dvd players.

WhiteWashMan

yeah, i have dvd genie and it allows you to change it as many times as you want through it.
be careful of changing it the normal way, as sometimes they hardware lock leaving you with region 56 or something wiered forever, even a format and reload wont work....

satchmo

Excellent.
Thanks guys

Figment

Some drives also limit the amount of region changes. You can check your drive at http://www.7thzone.com and download a new firmware for it if it needs it.

riam

What they're reason for limiting the number of times it can be changed?

TinCool

It's like those plastics sachets of tomato ketchup you get in most canteens for 10p or so. ****in ******* to open the ****ers. Basically, I'm sure it's, like those ****ing plastic sachets, is there to annoy people

_CreeD_

It's just adherence to copyright, had to be done to get Hollywood to really sign on for DVD.
If worst comes to worst (Where did that saying ever come from?...) and you have the drive space you could copy the .VOB files to your Hard Drive (Some are protected so you may need to use DECss to do it)and just play them in a software player (All the popular ones can be region-changed an unlimited amount of times with DVD genie). This is time consuming though.

bugs

Mat****sa DVD players from gateway have serious problems figuring out what the hell they're at , usually gives me a "region not correct" even if it is , and proceeds to play it anyway , true multi-region , heheh kinda

Kali

ere tin find any solution for that tomato ketchu packet problem yet??
damn they're annoying..

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http://www.filmsoc.com

Hecate

Richer sounds on the quays have a large stock of region 0 players...cheapest is about £250, not bad for what your getting.