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» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Books, Films, Food and Culture » What's up with making DVDs unreadable in other countries?!

   
Author Topic: What's up with making DVDs unreadable in other countries?!
Eaquae Legit
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Tonight I found a DVD copy of a show I used to love. It's been off the air for a while, and my VHS tapes are wearing out. (Plus, I am missing some episodes.) Unfortunately, I found them in the UK, and I am in Canada.

Apparently this means that even though I've been waiting for this for 7 or 8 years, I still have to wait longer, till the country that freaking made the stupid series gets around to releasing it.

I've heard a rumor that I could still play it on my laptop. I am greatly tech-unsavvy, and have no clue. So this post is part rant, part hope for help.

[Grumble]

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Samprimary
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Profit motive.
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Eaquae Legit
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They'd make more of a profit if I could buy the ^@(*#!! thing.
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Fusiachi
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A Google search for "region free dvd"(s) should solve your problems. There are a variety of software fixes that should work. I'm currently running linux, so I'm not sure offhand of the name of a win solution--but there certainly is one. Best of luck.

Edit: Though I seem to think you could change your laptop's region via device manager. There might be a limit to how often it'll allow that, though.

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Eaquae Legit
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Looking at my options, it seems I need a multi-region DVD player.

Anyone have any suggestions for an affordable model I can get here in Canada (or at least shipped here)? Or perhaps a model I can modify with minimal hassle?

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fugu13
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Order one from J-List.

http://www.jbox.com/SEARCH/dvd_player/1/ (link is to their no-porn site, j-box).

edit: and the companies do it to allow them to price discriminate without creating legal arbitrage opportunities. Its likely a move that hurts them, overall, but movie distributors have long been short on such things.

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Euripides
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I'm not clear on the law regarding this issue, but I believe it's legal to use DVD ripping software ('decrypters' or 'DVD back up software') or other software-based workarounds to bypass regions and other DRM protection, so long as you legally purchased a genuine disc. Although slightly more risky, there are also ways to rewrite your DVD player's firmware so that they ignore region codes. Both methods are easily googled. You might also find something on download.com.

While I know you are allowed to rip DVDs for your own personal use, I'm unclear on region code technicalities.

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Chris Bridges
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You can probably watch it on your laptop, depending on your DVD software, but when you put it in there it'll ask you if you want to change the region code and you're limited to how many times this can be done before the change becomes permanent. I ordered the Australian version of the Serenity DVD (2 discs, with more features) and watched it that way.
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Mucus
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Region-free is good. Just go to your local electronics retailer (I recommend the appropriate section in Price Club). Find the cheapest DVD player, it will in 80% of the time be made in China. You want one of these bacause players made in China usually flout restrictions the most (whether it be DRM, regions, Macrovision). This is I suppose irony [Smile]
As a bonus many of these will read divx files too.

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Kwea
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Most newer DVD players are region free, and DIVXX compatable.


Just make sure you ask before buying.


If you just want to watch it now, without buying a newDVD player, try DVDDecrypter.

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Will B
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It was an international agreement, mostly to prevent China from ripping off every copyright on the screen. I can't imagine why they thought it would work.
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Icarus
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Don't get a re-chipped DVD player. I did that and got ripped off a couple hundred bucks. You will find that your DVD player won't play the British DVD, because it's PAL and not NTSC, and you will find that it won't play many North American DVDs, because they have software to search for rechipped machines and not play on them.

Play it on your laptop. You can hook up your laptop to the TV; you will just need some adaptors, depending on what kind of outputs your laptop has. You don't need any decryption software, unless you want to go back and forth playing different regions on your laptop. If you use your laptop only for British DVDs, say, then just change the region. NTSC/PAL is not an issue with laptops. If you do need decryption software, I had good results with "DVD Region Free." Totally worth paying for.

-o-

I have actually done what you're trying to do. (Xena came out in Australia and England long before in the US). Make sure before you invest in someone's advice that they know what they're talking about. I wasted a lot of money and took a lot of bad advice when I went through this.

-o-

I don't buy that it's about China at all. That doesn't even make sense to me. I think it's about the fact that movies are released in different markets at different times, because they might need extra editing, or different times of the year might be the big times for new releases (Fourth of July is not such a big deal overseas, I'm guessing). Sometimes a movie is out in DVD in one market while still in theaters in another. They don't want to hurt their box office receipts by having people simply order the DVD. In addition, DVDs released in the US usually have (in my experience) more special features, and this might cause them to take longer to bring to market. (I'm guessing here.) This was the case with the Xena DVDs, that came out in Australia and England without any special features, but came out in the US two or three years later with special features. They might not want the US market to buy up the foreign ones and then not buy the domestic ones when they eventually reach market.

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Kwea
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JUst burn a copy of it with DVDdecrypter, then you can watch it on any Xvid or Dvixx compatable DVD player. [Smile]
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Will B
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The relevance of China is that China doesn't care about enforcing international copyright laws.
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Icarus
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Right. And Peru is in the Southern Hemisphere.

So?

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Mig
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Region codes explained:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/officialfaq.html#1.10

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Mucus
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I love it when I smack down unfounded speculation with a link, and its even better when someone else gets to it first. It gives me hope for the future [Smile]
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Euripides
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quote:
Originally posted by Kwea:

JUst burn a copy of it with DVDdecrypter, then you can watch it on any Xvid or Dvixx compatable DVD player. [Smile]

This is what I would do. No cost, no risk.
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mr_porteiro_head
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I really enjoy having a divxx compatable DVD player.
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Sterling
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In some cases it may also be possible to reconfigure your laptop's DVD software to be "region zero", or region-free.

I'll warn that some disks won't play on region zero players.

There are a lot of software work-arounds out there, though, yours for a Google search.

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Eaquae Legit
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I can't do anything permanent to my laptop. I can't take the risk of screwing anything up on it. So that option is out. I'm just not competent enough to trust myself with anything but the most simple things with it. Currently it's my only DVD player, so I can't set it to Region 2 permanently.

quote:
I have actually done what you're trying to do. (Xena came out in Australia and England long before in the US). Make sure before you invest in someone's advice that they know what they're talking about. I wasted a lot of money and took a lot of bad advice when I went through this.
Ummm... Got any suggestions for a player? You sound like you know what you're talking about. [Smile] I'm willing to shell out a certain amount if it'll solve the problem once and for all. I don't want a modified machine, I want something manufactured for region free. I'm still checking out the one fugu suggested.
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Icarus
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Well, on one of my laptops, I downloaded an application called DVD Region Free. That's what I would recommend. It worked great.
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Eaquae Legit
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This program?
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Hitoshi
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quote:
Originally posted by Euripides:
I'm not clear on the law regarding this issue, but I believe it's legal to use DVD ripping software ('decrypters' or 'DVD back up software') or other software-based workarounds to bypass regions and other DRM protection, so long as you legally purchased a genuine disc.

I've heard that it's legal to make a back-up of any disc and illegal for a company to prevent you from doing so, but illegal to circumvent copy protection, which prevents you from making a copy. Two conflicting laws, as I remember, but no one's challenged them successfully yet.
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Euripides
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I see.

In any case, I don't think EL has any reason to worry.

EL, these are free if you end up choosing the software route.

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Icarus
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Yeah, that's the one.

I found that program through C-Net as well. Euripedes, those programs are free to try and $35 to buy. What I found when I downloaded DVD Region Free from C-Net was that it would only show you about ten minutes worth of movie with the free sample. To see a whole movie uninterrupted, you had to buy it. Different programs may enforce their policies differently, so maybe you can actually get a working solution for free, but I just wanted to point out that those might not actually be free solutions--unless, of course, you have experience to the contrary with one of those in particular.

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Icarus
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Eaquae, there is also a "Lite" Version on that site for $15 less that might work for you.
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Eaquae Legit
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That might be just the thing.

If this works, Icarus, I will owe you a thousand and one thank-yous. If I had any sort of confidence this show would be released in North America, I might wait, but at this point I'm doubtful it ever will be.

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Euripides
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Whoops, I thought I had put the 'free' filter on that search.
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Icarus
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EDIT: There is a free demo for the Lite version [and for the other one as well] that you can download before you spend money on it, to be sure it will work.
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Will B
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The reason that Chinese (and other countries') violations of international copyright law is relevant to DVD player design is that DVD players' region codes were meant as a way of limiting violations of international copyright law.
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Icarus
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I don't see how region codes accomplish anything useful in that regard. Can you spell it out for me?
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raventh1
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Yes, The market in china is very competitive with piracy. That means they need to lower prices to even think about competing. This is one answer of many.

If I order a Chinese region movie and ship it here it could still be cheaper than me going to the store down the street. Different markets have different prices for varying reasons: Piracy, GDP, Technical specifications (NTSC, PAL).

They think that if they have different prices for different markets that they can make the same percentage of money based on the average income of that countries citizen and so forth.

With the world growing ever smaller with technology this is proving to be increasingly difficult every year. Blu-ray has only 3 Regions, A) Americas, Japan B) European countries, Africa, Australia C) Russia, China.

There are now only 3 regions, compared to 8 with dvd. I see this to be eventually phased out. However, it could take longer than I think.

Apparently HD-DVD has no region lockout at this point. I didn't know this until I looked it up at wikipedia.org.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_codes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluray#Region_codes

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Teshi
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Certain people in my family have the ability to doctor certain Region 1 DVD players to think they are region zero, thus allowing us to play all the VDs we get as gifts from our English relatives that aren't available in North America.

It can be done, and quite easily.

Many computer DVD players will only allow you switch back and forth a certain amount of times between the two.

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Icarus
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I bought a doctored DVD player, and it triggered built in warnings on some DVDs (the RCE/REA stuff mentioned on Mig's link) so they didn't play.

Computers will only allow you to switch five or six times, but a good software workaround will let you do it infinitely many times.

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Kwea
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One more time....

DVDDecrypter works great. It decrypts every disk I have used it on.


And it's FREE.

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Icarus
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What foreign DVDs have you watched with it?
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Kwea
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Many, actually. Fearless (not bought in the US) being one of them. It will break the encryption on almost any film, even foreign ones, usually.

If your computer plays it, I can usually burn a copy of it with DVDDecrypter and assorted burning software.

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Kwea
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Here is a great guide to all things DVD. [Smile]

[Big Grin]

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Icarus
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Okay. [Smile]

Out of personal curiosity and not contentiousness . . . why? I mean, most people will never need to bother with this. Eaquae Legit and I have both explained why we wanted DVDs from other countries, and in both cases it comes down to obsessive fanaticism (more on Cor's part than on mine). I don't know what Fearless is. Is that a television show or a movie? Did you order it from amazon.uk or something like that? We have ordered Xena DVDs from amazon.uk and from an Australian site whose precise name escapes me, but it was something like Box Office.

[Smile]

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Eaquae Legit
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For me, mostly it comes down to the fact that Ic's suggestion looks a lot more incompetent-friendly than Kwea's. [Blushing] I'm willing to pay for something that won't have me swearing in frustration.
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enjeeo
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Now here's something I love about Australia. It was decided here a few years back that region codes violate the Trade Practices Act and now all DVD players sold in Australia have to be region-free. I can watch anything from anywhere. [Smile]
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