DVD Region Query

timestar

I have been looking for a DVD (The Paper Chase original film) for ages and can only find it as a Region 1 DVD, i.e. North America. Will a Region 1 DVD play as normal if played on my laptop?

missile

timestar wrote: »

I have been looking for a DVD (The Paper Chase original film) for ages and can only find it as a Region 1 DVD, i.e. North America. Will a Region 1 DVD play as normal if played on my laptop?

AFIK, computers do not have the region restrictions that some DVD players have.

aliEnRIK

It probably would. But you really dont want to do that as it will auto change your laptops region. This can only be done a few times (Varies depending on the player) and will lock up after a number of changes
You could buy it, use DVD DECRYPTOR to make it region free and watch it on a newly burned dual layer disc if you REALLY want it

KxMx

If you already have a dvd player then it's extremely easy to turn it back to region free (as all players start their life, and then changed once destination is known). Just google your make, model and "region free code" and you should be able to find what you need.

During playback the picture can look slightly different, but with the remote most players will switch to NTSC viewing format (region 1), or "multi" has good results too.

John_Gray

timestar wrote: »

I have been looking for a DVD (The Paper Chase original film) for ages and can only find it as a Region 1 DVD, i.e. North America. Will a Region 1 DVD play as normal if played on my laptop?

I'm afraid I disagree with previous comments, and have found that you get a message when trying to play Region 1 DVDs on an ordinary PC which talks about changing the region of the DVD player, and that you can only do this back and forward three times. At the time I Googled for software which trapped this attempted region changing, and found lots of quite complicated drivers which were specific to the exact make and model and firmware level of the DVD player, in the PC. Then I got bored with the whole idea of playing DVDs on a (comparatively) tiny screen...

aliEnRIK

John_Gray wrote: »

I'm afraid I disagree with previous comments, and have found that you get a message when trying to play Region 1 DVDs on an ordinary PC which talks about changing the region of the DVD player, and that you can only do this back and forward three times.

If you read my 'previous comment' youll note its the exact same as youve just wrote. And my method of using dvd decryptor does work as ive done it 3 or 4 times myself now

John_Gray

I read your "it probably would" to mean that "it would probably work as many times as you liked", and wrote about that sentence and the post from Missile! I think the OP should have got the general gist.

davetrousers

DVDShrink is another top tool . It will shrink the files to fit on a single layer DVD, you can copy the whole disc or just the film part (ie omit the extras, foreign languages, subtitles etc.).

Rik in the past I have only used dvd decryptor when the (less advanced) decryptor in dvd shrink hasn't been successful. But I haven't used eithr for a couple of years now!

aliEnRIK

John_Gray wrote: »

I read your "it probably would" to mean that "it would probably work as many times as you liked", and wrote about that sentence and the post from Missile! I think the OP should have got the general gist.

Except I wrote "But you really dont want to do that as it will auto change your laptops region. This can only be done a few times"

aliEnRIK

davetrousers wrote: »

DVDShrink is another top tool . It will shrink the files to fit on a single layer DVD, you can copy the whole disc or just the film part (ie omit the extras, foreign languages, subtitles etc.).

Rik in the past I have only used dvd decryptor when the (less advanced) decryptor in dvd shrink hasn't been successful. But I haven't used eithr for a couple of years now!

I was giving the option of a fully uncompressed film + extras. But sure, shrink will work (Should work, not always) for free. As will many other programs for compression