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DVD region questions

thunderclumpthunderclump Registered User regular
edited September 2007 in Games and Technology
I'm thinking of importing a Region 1 DVD into the UK. However, I'm not sure which (if any) of the DVD players I own will play it successfully. I have:

A PC with a DVD drive
A PAL XBox 360
A PAL Playstation 2

Will any of these work? If not, are there any solutions?

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thunderclump on

Posts

  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited September 2007
    VLC will play the DVD on your PC.

    http://videolan.org/

    Daedalus on
  • Namel3ssNamel3ss Registered User regular
    edited September 2007
    Also, if those all fail, you can rip the DVD and re-encode whatever region code you want with something like http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html

    Namel3ss on
    May the wombat of happiness snuffle through your underbrush.
  • FiskebentFiskebent DenmarkRegistered User regular
    edited September 2007
    I think some PC DVD drives are region locked in the firmware. Or they let you change region 5 times and then lock the region. Luckily there are usually patched firmwares around that'll remove that 'feature'. But you'll have to patch your drive.

    I doubt you'll get a PAL 360 or PS2 to play it.

    Fiskebent on
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  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited September 2007
    You also might be able to import a region-free player from Australia or something.

    Daedalus on
  • iMattiMatt Registered User regular
    edited September 2007
    You can get a memory card thing for the PS2 which will make it multi region.

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blaze-DVD-Region-Free/dp/B00005YTDD

    iMatt on
  • japanjapan Registered User regular
    edited September 2007
    The last two DVD players I've bought from Tesco have played any region DVDs. The trick appears to go for the ones that cost £15 and are manufactured by a company you've never heard of.

    japan on
  • XagarathXagarath Registered User regular
    edited September 2007
    Remote Seletor is free software that'll do the trrick, though it only works with older dvd-playing programs.

    Xagarath on
  • nexuscrawlernexuscrawler Registered User regular
    edited September 2007
    Your bigger problem is video system. A region 1 DVD from the US will be NTSC(30 fps). Even without region coding your dvd player may not play a NTSC DVD properly. PAL players tend to be better about playing NTSC than NTSC playing PAL. Still it may not work and if it does it may translate it into PAL on the fly which can give it a stutter. Likewise your tv may or may no know what to make of an NTSC signal.

    A computer will work in all cases though as PC DVD drives do not care about PAL or NTSC and will play both natively. You may need to get remote selector to bypass the region coding though.

    nexuscrawler on
  • thunderclumpthunderclump Registered User regular
    edited September 2007
    Thanks guys, I wasn't hopeful for the PS2 or 360, but it seems like there are plenty of workarounds for the PC.

    Let this thread rest in peace.

    thunderclump on
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