Making PCs region free

[Eldpollard]

Is there a way I can change my laptop to play dvds of all regions? I imagine a software download of some sort.

[valadil]

Not sure about making it totally region free but most DVD players will allow you to change the region. The only problem is there's a limit of how many times you can do that, which I think is 5 per DVD player.

[Elliot Kane]

My DVD drive on my PC is multi-region, and runs on PowerDVD, which is a very good program, IMO.

I can't say for sure that installing PowerDVD will help, but it might. You may have to replace the drive, though.

[Ashtar]

If you are comfortable with reflashing the firmware of your laptop DVD-Drive, then you can find the correct firmwares on this forum: http://forum.rpc1.org
Warning: A wrong firmware / bad flashing or mistake will break your drive.

To find which one to use, you need the exact model of your drive (Example: MATSH_ITA DVD-RAM UJ-822S on my T43 IBM Thinkpad) and search for that on the forum. The model name is available in Windows in the "Device Manager" under DVD/CD-Rom drives.

Edit: MATSH_ITA because without the _ it gets censored.

[AtomicKitKat]

VLC Media Player can play any region, as far as I know. I don't much care for WinMP.

[Eldred]

VLC Media Player can play any region, as far as I know.

I second VLC Media Player - I've got different region DVDs and they've all worked fine with it. It's also a really easy media player to use.

[FdL]

I thought this was a problem when I got my first DVD drive. Then I got some little program called DVD Region Free, and with that and PowerDVD it works just fine. I didn't have to use any special software in my new machine though.
I still don't know why manufacturers bother with that kind of stuff...It's just to annoy their customers, and little else :smallannoyed:

[tannish2]

it is to appease the license fairys of course, do you know ANYTHING!?

[Tom_Violence]

If I recall correctly PowerDVD alone didn't allow me to watch all the regions I wanted. But then I never delved too deeply into it so its more than possible that I missed things.