I picked up a second hand copy of Star Wars the Phantom Menace, not noticing that it was a region 1 disk (I live in the UK.) My DVD player in my PC has gone through the 5 allowed changes to the region before I set it back to region 2 permanently.
Now that I’ve done this, is there any way to get the DVD turned regionless again so I can watch my disc? I’ve tried a programme called rpcde2 that has no effect. If I cannot change the region code, is there anyway to rip it onto a VCD? Are there any decent shareware/freeware programmes to do this for DVD’s in my region??
(And I wasn’t too sure if this was a GQ or IMHO, but I did think long and hard before posting in this forum ok )
I’m not sure that the Dope really wants to be exploring how to defeat region encoding. I won’t give you a direct link, I will tell you that the DVDRhelp forum covers DVD and VCD related topics.
Unfortunately discussing the how to of making a copy for yourself is a grey are on these boards.
But, yes, it certainly is possible and the DVDRHelp forums is a good place to start (or you can e-mail me).
Alternatively, you can buy DVD Idle Pro. It’ll run on your PC whenever you start your DVD playback software and will ignore region codes as well as macro vision (great for TV out equipped Pc’s).
You can, of course, buy a perfectly legal brand-new multi-region DVD player in the UK for forty quid or thereabouts. Maybe less if you shop around. Works for me, anyway.
Most of the free rippers on this site (DVD Decryptor, DVD Shrink, among others) remove all copy-protection from the disk when ripping to your hard drive - including CSS and Macrovision.
What is the point of the whole region system, anyway? Seems like the only purpose it would serve is to restrict the market for any given DVD, and off the top of my head I can’t think of any reason someone would want to do that. After all, that’s not the case with CDs, is it?
My understanding is that the studios implemented it so that they could maintain their practice of rolling out films in staggered fashion throughout the world. For example, most Hollywood features open in European theaters weeks or months after they premiere in North America. If a DVD was released in NA too close to the European theatrical premiere, or even before it, and Europeans could buy it through Amazon USA, it could undercut the box office for the film.
The region system is supposed to prevent this by making DVDs from one region unplayable in another.
However, the coming of digital cinema and the growing problem of piracy, along with the trend to wider releases and shortened theatrical runs, means that the industry is moving toward a day when the DVD version of a film will be released much sooner after the theatrical premiere. This in turn will tend to make the region coding less important, and could eventually do away with it altogether.
Last November, The Matrix Revolutions was released worldwide on the same day (at exactly the same moment, as a matter of fact). If that becomes more common, there’ll be little or no need for region coding. And once digital cinema becomes more widespread, the major obstacle to opening in tens of thousands of theaters–the cost and time required to print and ship tens of thousands of 35mm prints–will be gone.
The region system is also to allow the studios to set different prices for different areas. Say the Europeans are rich we ca price the movies at 20 euros and sell the movies. The African’s are poor and we need to set the prices at say 5 euros to sell the movies. Without the regions there could be a brisk trade in buying DVDs in Africa and sending them to Europe. The prices here are made up by me for illustration.
I was also under the impression that region free DVD players were extremely common in areas other than the US. Would the non north American people confirm or denie this?
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