Do US DVDs/CDs work in the UK?

sophie_maxwell

Does anyone know if cds or dvds from the USA work in the UK? I heard something about regions but not really sure about the whole thing.

Wanna make sure before buying stuff

Thanks

Sophie

Alltheloginsaretakenappar

Us is region 1, UK is region 2. These days many dvdplayers are region-free, that is they will play discs from any region. Many dvdplayers that aren't sold as region-free can actually be made region-free by accessing a secret part of the menu via the remote control. Look up your make and model here to see if you can do this

BillScarab

CD's should be fine but DVD's are region coded. Europe is region 2 the US is region 1 so in theory they won't work. However most DVD players can be altered to play DVD's from any region. Some DVD's are region 0 which means they can be palyed anywhere.

Have a look here for further info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_codes

And if you go here you can find out if your DVD player can be 'hacked' to play region 1 discs.

http://www.dvdhacks.co.uk/

Darksun

Also be aware that US DVDs use NTSC whereas Europe uses PAL. Most modern equipment can handle both though.

eyelinerprincess

And just to add, you can play other region DVDs if you have a DVD Drive on your computer, but only a limited number of times, then it gets "stuck" on one region.

CDs are fine, I regularly buy CDs from the US because I just can't get them over here.

archimorphic

I have tried this many times and have yet to find a solution, it's probably not unsolvable but it's a good one to try. At best I would suggest a converter such as you can check cnet.com as a start. Start here for some good avice.

eyelinerprincess

My laptop's stuck on region 1, which is a pain, and I've been going from trial to trial, but the real things cost around $40.

-TangleFoot-

eyelinerprincess wrote:

My laptop's stuck on region 1, which is a pain...

What make and model is your DVD drive? If it happens to be a Lite-On¹ drive, the region counter can be reset quite easily. If not, you might find a solution to your problem here: the Regional Playback Control² features of many drives can be effectively disabled with a simple firmware update.

1. Many OEM drives are actually re-branded Lite-On drives.
2. Computer DVD drives come from the factory with RPC (Regional Playback Control), either RPC-1 (older drives) or RPC-2 (newer drives). The difference between the two is that RPC-1 means the player software has the responsibility of enforcing the region control, while in RPC-2, it is enforced by the drive's firmware.

cmc_entertainment

or google AnyDVD / RemoteSelect - it dosent fiddle with your drive at all

cmc_entertainment

also this site may be of help


https://www.vcdhelp.com