Hi everyone.

Just wondered if there was a way to play international discs on a machine here in America. I have a couple DVDs I brought home from Australia and the only thing the player will do is give me a wrong region message. The US is region 1 and Australia is region 4. No switch on the machine or anything like that. I was wondering if there was some secret code I could put in via the remote that would switch it over so I could watch these videos. Any ideas?

Thanks everyone.

 

You need to talk to a IT guy.

 

I doubt very much you'll find a code or a switch or anything that will let you play a region 4 DVD on a region 1 machine. The whole point of this "region" business is to prevent someone from doing exactly what you're trying to do...buy a DVD in one part of the world and use it in another.

But you're really just a victim. What the policy is really trying to prevent is someone buying DVDs in one part of the world and then SELLING them again in another part. You bought those DVDs for personal use, and, in a just world, you should be able to use them anywhere you want. But you've been caught in the crossfire created by this policy. Unless you can find some way to hack the system, I think your going to be out of luck.

 

You can't get your DVD player to work with them, the formatting is different. There are machines available that will play other regions in addition to ours.

 

Slant, welcome to the wide world of media piracy. What you are looking for is a firmware upgrade that will make the dvd player regionless.

Or, you can venture into making the DVDs work, but you'll need a computer with a dvd burner and some software.

 

Thanks everyone. No, my intent was not piracy, just to watch them at home. Hm. Maybe I can catch them on Netflix.

 

You want a multi-region DVD player. They exist but can be hard to find as they're not permitted under the DVD licensing agreements.

The other option is to get a computer with a DVD drive where you can change the region through software on the DVD drive. Several drives let you change the region 5 times (no idea who came up with 5, but that's the normal number), then it can never be changed again.

My favorite part of flying to/from AUS is catching up on their comedies. Good stuff that almost never gets air time here. "The Little Death" and "Infinite Man" are simply fantastic.

 

Not true, they sell them through Amazon and probably other outlets as well.

 

If it's really just a firmware update, you might have an option. If you have an extra dvd player laying about that doesn't get much use, AND has a usb slot, you might be able to go on your computer to the mfr website to download the firmware you'd need to play it onto an thumb drive. You would then take that thumb drive and plug it into your dvd player.

I have never attempted this, but I do have an old Sony dvd player that pretty much stopped playing any newer dvds after 10 years of ownership (it's 20 years old now). The movie houses would change the format of the dvds from time to time, thus making our old players obsolete. I never tossed the player because I planned on trying the firmware update. Of course, I never have time to mess around with stuff like that, so in the basement it sits...

 

Eh, I think I'll just take them back to Australia and give them to my friends. I'm no techie, not interested enough to try all this. But thanks everyone. Nothing ventured, as they say.

 

When? Can you get a flight to Australia any time soon? Why not just mail them to Australia?

 

Jaunty, Mike works for Delta

:Marry me fly free"

 

Interesting. I didn't know that. Is Delta flying anything to Australia right now?

 

No, we are not. Last flight out of Sydney was March 19. Tentative return is April 30. We'll see.

I go there every March so I'll take them next time. Surely we'll be back flying there by then.

 

This, and MakeMKV will get you a file(s) you can then play back on a "smart" TV or blu-ray player from a thumb drive (or network storage). You could theoretically "rip" the DVD using your computer drive (after changing the region code) and then re-burn it to a DVD-R after setting your DVD drive back to region 1.

 

So after not thinking about this at all for a couple weeks, I thought I'd put the DVD into my laptop. Guess what, it played it with no problems. I had to agree to their terms of not using it for promotion and the like, and there were no warranties for anything. Sure, what do I care. The movie I was watching is 15 years old.

If you are wondering, I was watching Love the Beast. It's Eric Bana the actor racing around in his XB Falcon. Kind of slow for a movie, it's really a documentary, but he's a car guy through and through and some of the things he said, as well as Dr. Phil and Leno and Jeremy Clarkson, really rang true.

Anyway, glad I could get it to work. And I appreciate you guys weighing in with your suggestions.

Next up, Red Dog.