Making DVD drive region-free

Jenny · Sat 17 Oct, 2009 18.25

My sister asked me how you go about doing this, however as I've never played a DVD on my computer it's not something I've ever had to worry about. So how does one go about it, preferably for no money?

Philip · Sat 17 Oct, 2009 18.32

If you have a Mac, you can change the region code for the DVD Player a few times before it gets locked to your last chosen region code.

cdd · Sat 17 Oct, 2009 18.38

One way is to get a program like 'AnyDVD' or 'VLC Media Player' which both use brute force (i.e. hacking) software to get the DVD to play in a drive of the wrong region.

However the above is usually quite jerky. DVD drives ard locked so you can't change the region more than five times. To get rid of this limit you need to find "hacked" firmware for the drive.

But the drives that come built in to most computers are often not easily hackable (infamously by Matshita) so sadly the long and short of it is it might not be possible.

Your best bet is to go on Ebay and buy another DVD drive - they're only cheap these days and you can easily buy region free ones.