About two weeks ago my girlfriend talked me into going to the Miami International Film Festival. Most of the moveis we saw were good or extremely good. I am hooked, damn her…
There is one movie from Hungary, Kontroll, that I would like to buy but I just found out about DVD regional encoding. Greaaat…
But I also found out that there is a potential hack for my DVD player Samsung M301. This is the hack
Now, before I go off and buy another remote and a Region 0 DVD, does anyone know if this hack works? Alterantively, is there any other method (i.e. software) I could use to rip the DVD to region 1?
Thanks,
Ivan
By the way the films really are great. Check them out at my new blog - Irreverant
If the DVD is region 0, then that means it is not region encoded, and should play in any player. A region 1 player should play both regions 1 & 0, a region 4 player should play 4 and 0, etc.
Anybody creating very small run DVD’s (which is what this sounds like) who does not use region 0 is crazy. When you’re selling very small numbers of units, cutting your possible audience down further is just stupid.
OK so the follwing quote from About.com, “REGION 0 or REGION ALL – Discs are uncoded and can be played Worldwide, however, PAL discs must be played in a PAL-compatible unit and NTSC discs must be played in an NTSC-compatible unit.” is really incorrect?
You can play an NTSC region 0 DVD on any NTSC player. PAL region 0 DVDs only on PAL players.
Even if the DVD you get is PAL, there are ways to re-encode it to NTSC. as was previosly mentioned, www.dvdrhelp.com is a great resource.
Do you have a DVD burner? IF you do, you can re-encode any DVD to work on any equipment with the right tools.
No, it’s correct (mostly). Regional encoding and PAL/NTSC formatting are two seperate things.
Check to see if your player and TV will play both PAL and NTSC. I haven’t seen a DVD, Video or TV for years that wouldn’t play both. But I don’t live in the US, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they only did NTSC there.
yes, these tools are in the dvdrhelp.com site. If you can’t find what you are looking for, I can step you through (and even send) the stuff you need. You can email me if you need help.
I found the manual for the M301 and it’s not that helpful. There is one sentence that instructs you to look in the back of the player to see the region encoding. It has a 1. However, the range specified in the instructions show a range from 1 to 6, not 0 to 6.
As pointed out earlier, your disc has region ecoding ‘0’, aka no region encoding at all. From a region point of view, it will be playable in all DVD players.
On the other hand, if it is encoded in PAL you will need one of two things:
a TV capable of showing PAL. (I don’t know much about US TV’s, but most new tellies in Europe are able to show both PAL and NTSC.)
or
-a DVD player that converts the PAL to NTSC. (Again, I don’t know the US market, but these are fairly common in Europe.)
If it IS region 0, pop it into your DVD player. Many, many DVD players WILL play PAL DVD’s with no need for a PAL TV set. (I own 3 DVD players currently and they all play PAL DVD’s, my mom’s however won’t so try it out first).
Removing regional encoding is easy as pie, and I would be happy to detail the process to you, fele free to email me.
Transcoding to NTSC is a little more complicated but mostly, it just takes longer. I’ll be happy to help you with that too.
Hacking the DVD player is not illegal. The region coding is an agreement between software and hardware industries (which sometimes are the same, e,g, Sony) to prevent releases to screw up scheduling in other markets. Man on Fire opened just a few weeks ago here, but I think it’s been out for a while on DVD in the US.
However, hacking the player is as illegal as putting a Midas muffler in your car. You’re gonna hear a lot of noise from the car maker about using original parts, but it’s not illegal to use other parts.