I have a Region 1 DVD player and my brother has a Region 1 DVD drive in his laptop.
There is an Australian (Region 4) DVD I want to see, and it has only been released as region 4 or PAL VHS (also limited to Australian/Asian/African VCRs).
So what are my options here? I really don’t want to fork over $70+ for a new multi-region DVD player just so I can watch one movie. Are there adapters? Is there software my brother could install on his laptop to allow his drive to recognize a Region 4 DVD? Is there a VCR adapter to convert PAL VHSes to NTSC format?
What you need is new firmware for your DVD-Rom that bypasses region coding, and I think it’s a similar process (that a technician may need to perform) for a regular DVD player. But I’m not sure how easy that is, or if particular brands don’t lend themselves to such things. In any case, flashing firmware can be dangerous (you might fry your DVD player completely) and there’ll be a fee associated with a technician, so in the end it’d be easier to just buy a region-free player, I think.
BTW, I am not an expert, and I’m in Australia where I know that’s what I did for my DVD player (back in the days when region-coding was still implemented in Australia).
There are many websites out there that list how to modify many DVD players (including PC ones). Some (like mine) can be made multi-region by hitting the right key combinations on the remote. Others require a formware upload, which is somewhat more hazardous. Without knowing your exact model and doing research, it’s difficult to say what your options are.
Samsung makes many easy-to-modify regionless players. The local Best Buy here had floor techs setting them up that way for people, just to make the sale.
The PAL-NTSC issue isn’t really the issue here in this case - you have to decode the region, technically, before you even get to the PAL/NTSC level. Although it is about $70-$100 for a regionless player, I recommend that as the simplest option. And AFAIK after an extensive legal search, there is no actual law in the US or the UK regarding modifying an existing player to play your legally-purchased, legally-owned DVDs.
If you only want to watch the movie once, you can change the DVD-ROM drive’s region code. On Windows you just need to open the drive’s property page to find that setting. But be careful - you can only change the region a certain number of times (usually 5), after which it will be stuck at the last region you selected.
I haven’t looked into the legalities of region hacking myself, but ISTM the DMCA provision against circumventing access controls would apply here.
If the DVD region coding system isn’t a “technological measure that effectively controls access to a work”, then what is?
There are commercial software solutions available to make your computer’s DVD region-free (I don’t know how they work, but they don’t alter the drive’s firmware) - I’m not sure what this board’s stance is regarding them, so I’m not going to post a link unless a mod specifically says I can.
It seems weird to me that there should be a legal problem with reprogramming a DVD. After all, If I purchased the machine legally, then I also own all the software contained within, and can do whatever I want with it - so long as I don’t resell it in an altered form. Forbidding me to do this would be like not allowing me to modify Windows folders on my PC.
Well, look at the legal battles over DeCSS, which decrypts DVDs so they can be played on systems that have no official DVD player software (such as Linux). From the DMCA’s point of view, as I understand it, circumventing the region code is the same as circumventing the encryption - they’re both access controls.
This region crap still pisses me off. It only seems to punish people in Region 1 (me) because everywhere else, multi-region players seem to be the norm.
This makes no fucking sense.
What is the more likely scenario? I (in the USA) want to buy some obscure Australian movie that will never be released here but am told “Fuck Off” because I can’t watch region 4. But some guy in Europe can buy a region 1 DVD of a movie that hasn’t even come out in theatres in Europe and can watch that disk.
Wasn’t the second scenario the one that regioning was meant to prevent?