A question that is not about cars

[kevinday]

Can anybody help, I am looking at replacing my laptop with a new one that has a DVD drive. These are cheapest in the States but will have a US coded DVD player. Is it possible to remove the coding or convert it to European standard to use my European DVDs?

[marki]

Hi , as far as i know DVD codes are not changable But , a laptop is or should be to a world wide standard for use "world wide" it depends what you want to use it for.

[rthierry]

Kevin,

I know that when I picked up my company laptop the DVD drive was there but the driver was not installed. I download the driver from the Compaq web site and installed it. During the installation process I was asked to select a specific geographic area. I suppose that I you buy the hardware separately and install it yourself - most laptop are now design so that you can swap a drived and dvd / cd rom drive - you'll have the choice. Otherwise I guess you'd have to request whoever you are buying from to do this for you.

Hope this helps.

Rgds

Roms

[Marshy]

Beware, it varies depending on the precise DVD drive used. The region code is usually somewhere in the "firmware" and while changable, is sometimes only changable a certain number of times. So if you have a mix of different region coded DVDs, you could end up in a bit of bother at some point.

Laptops and geographical mobility make a bloody mockery of the whole region coding business. Higher price scams in different regions being the only reason for it, IMHO. Motion Picture Ass. of America. Bastards.

>> Edited by Marshy on Monday 18th February 11:28

[kevinday]

Thanks guys, the laptop will be another Toshiba with their own drive. I guess I will have to specify Euro coding when I purchase it.

[.mark]

Just to add. Mines an IBM Laptop the DVD comes with software you have to install and it's at this point you select the region. This region can then be changed a further 5 times before it renders itself useless.

[workshy fopp]

Get DVD Genie - it lets you swap regions at will.

[Whoozit]

I second the DVD Genie recommendation. I use it on my laptop and my main machine, no problems in using DVDs from other regions.

[Bombjack]

Marshy is right, it's all in the drive's firmware. DVD Genie allows you to bypass the limit on changing regions that is built into most DVD decoding software (e.g. WinDVD, PowerDVD) but it can do nothing about the firmware of the drive itself.

Some DVD drives aren't region locked at all, some have a set number of changes allowed, some are region locked from the beginning.

Most DVD drives can be hacked to allow region-free play by flashing the firmware to a new version (written by a hacker), although this is not without risks. I suggest you do a websearch on 'dvd firmware' to find out more.

[Alex]

Find out what make of drive is fitted to your PC and then go to this page to find a firmware patch that will make it 'region free'.

www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/firmwarepage.html

You then need a utility like DVD Genie to make your DVD playback software region free also.

[Nacnud]

I've got a Dell Inspiron and it allows 5 region changes before trashing the DVD.

[philshort]

Nacnud - dunno if they've got any smarter, but my Inspiron DVD was region coded via registry entries. I worked out which registry keys changed when you swapped regions, and saved those to .reg files so I could load them back. Now I use the .reg files to swap between regions, and I always have 4 tries left!



>> Edited by philshort on Monday 18th February 21:22

[campbell]

Can you flash the bios so it can play multy regiom DVDs.
Most of these units can.
I would looking that Kevin.

[kevinday]

Thanks again guys, I will look at all the options when I buy it.