I resent DVD regionalisation. It has but one purpose: to stiff the people in the UK and other 'rich' countries with DVD prices well beyond the manufacturing costs and reasonable profit.
First introduced by the DVD Consortium on standalone players, they then chose in 2000 to impose this garbage on users, by introducing region-locked drives.
Since then the whole regionalisation game is truly up, as Asian DVD player makers soon realised the best way to sell their equipment was to leak how to de-regionalise their machine, and the whole system became an utter farce. But, continuing the illusion drive makers are forced to add region controls to their drives and DVD playing applications.
Three Rivers To Cross
Originally all drives were made 'RPC-1' (Region Playback Control) or 'Region Free', but for a number of years now they've been 'RPC-2' or 'Region Locked'. The RPC-2 drives have the following limitations:
* They must be set to a region, and only one
* They will only transfer data for that region to be played
* The drive can be region set by the user, but only a small number of times (usually four) before the setting becomes permanent
So clearly RPC-1 drives, if they were still made, would be preferable.
However, the region locking aspect on the PC is further complicated by two subsequent barriers to overcome: in the OS and the applications that play DVD contents.
If the OS or DVD playing application encounters a RPC-1 drive, then they take it on themselves to offer an alternative 'counter' system to replace the one that's not on the drive. Therefore it may be that you can circumvent the drive locking, but the applications or OS then locks to a specific region.
One very cool way around this are those firmware modifications that are made not to remove the drive counter, but allow it to be set indefinitely, or to reset each time the PC is rebooted. So you still get asked what region you would like to set, but you can go on changing it repeatedly.
In this way it's not required to circumvent the other protection schemes, as they can go on deluding themselves that the drive is now set.
But that's not the only way to get around regionalisation.
Non-Invasive Methods
One method to circumvent region locking is very simple: convert the disc you want to watch into region zero, whereupon any drive will happily play it without a problem. The only issue with doing this is that to decrypt a commercial DVD (that you own) and rewrite it breaks a number of laws, and insults the gods of obscene profit. And, from a practical perspective, unless you have a dual layer burner and media it might not be that easy an exercise. You could decrypt it to the hard drive but that would take lots of drive space, and you'd be forced to keep it there as long as you wanted to watch the movie.
A more realistic proposal is to have the regionalisation stripped out on the fly by an application designed to do this. The existence of these applications is probably illegal also, somewhere in the world, but they are available, and they do work perfectly.
Once installed these tools sit between the DVD playing applications and the drives, making the data region zero before it hits the application. In the process it also removes all protection and other junk-like macrovision, so they have other uses I'll not discuss here.
One of the best of these, I'm told, is DVD Region+CSS Free, by DVDIdle (www.dvdidle.com). This is a commercial application that costs £20, but they have a 'Lite' version that does the important jobs for £12. Using it you can (in theory) watch any region DVD on a locked (RPC-2) drive without modification.
The latest release also plays protected audio CDs and stops both CD and DVD discs from attempting to load applications on to your PC. If you want a simple, and relatively risk free, way around region locking then this is it, but there are a number of other applications that do much the same job.
Invasive Methods
Using tools like DVD Region Free is simple, but it's another process that you force the PC to do, which it wouldn't need to do if regionalisation didn't exist. A much cooler method would be to remove regionalisation altogether, and turn the drive into an RPC-1 drive, making it read all discs without modification. "But surely doing that would be impossible," I hear you all scream in synchronisation? "No," I reply, both dark and light sides have all drives. As the DVD Consortium wouldn't know a silicon chip from a spider they once stood on, they leave things like regionalisation to the hardware makers.
They make millions of drives, and making them different for each region is completely impractical. So, physically they are identical and the only difference is the firmware that the drives have written to them before they are shipped. Logically therefore if you get the firmware from a region 4 drive and flash another region then you can turn it to region 4. Taking that logic further if you take firmware from a range of regions and compare them, it's entirely feasible to work out the difference and how regionalisation is encoded. Once that's been established, it's only a matter of time before a region free version of the firmware is made, which once installed ends the debate entirely, as the RPC-1 drive will read anything.
As the drive makers have designed these drives to be firmware upgradeable it's just a matter of getting the firmware and 'upgrading' it. And, it's 'sayonara' to drive regionalisation.
Actually, I'll add a caveat to that last statement. It's been reported that some RPC-1 drives won't playback RCE protected discs, in the same way that some standalone players don't like them either. Thankfully, these discs are relatively small in number.
What this method won't do is stop the software region coding kicking in, and you'll need to get a tool or application that can circumvent that before you are fully fixed for region coding.
Minor Catches
Before anyone rushes off and does this, a small word of warning. Flashing any device, drive, graphics card or motherboard, involves a small degree of risk. If the flash chip isn't functioning correctly, or you use the wrong firmware, or the power spikes during burn, it's possible to take a completely functioning piece of equipment and consign it to the junk pile. This is true irrespective of the source of the firmware, as it can happen with manufacturer-approved upgrades. It could be argued that more care is taken by the drive makers to avoid problems, but it's a risk either way.
Once a drive is flashed with firmware that the drive maker didn't originate it might also become impossible to upgrade to a later official release.
My experience has been the only drive I've lost in this fashion was with an official upgrade, so I'd suggest you consider the risk before replacing the firmware under any circumstances. That said I've upgraded and de-regionalised many others without incident.
The only other concern is that should the drive fail under warranty, are you covered if the drive isn't using an official firmware? The 'official' answer to this is 'no', as I'm sure most drive makers would claim it invalidates their cover. Being slightly more realistic, depending on the nature of your failure it may be impossible for the drive makers to ever find out what firmware was actually installed at the point of death without incurring expense beyond the cost of replacing the drive. If the drive dies because the firmware is corrupt, then it could be impossible to determine if it was an official upgrade that went wrong or a modified one. Drive makers know what people do, and know that drives die and firmware flashes occasionally go wrong.
I'm sure that the drive makers would be impressed with your honesty when you tell them your de-regionalised the drive before it broke, but I can't see in most circumstances it could be classed as an attributable factor.
How It Works
Okay, you've accepted the statistical possibility of prematurely killing your drive, and the likelihood that you'll get no more Christmas cards from the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) again, so how do you de-regionalise a DVD drive?
The first place you need to visit is a special website, an oracle of all DVD drive knowledge, The Firmware Page (forum.rpc1.org/portal.php). I'm sure there are other places some of the information contained on this site, but this has everything you need for this job.
On the site it's possible to search for your drive, and see what's available in the world of firmware. The site very kindly tracks all the official releases, so it's often easier to come here than to try to find an upgrade on the maker's site.
Once you've located your drive you'll see all the firmware that's available, and usually there will be one marked as 'region free'. Unremarkably, this is the one you want. My drive is the Plextor PX716A, a wonderful drive, but like every other sold it's RPC-2 region locked.
The link from The Firmware Page takes me to an area run by two industrious siblings called 'The Dangerous Brothers', who amuse themselves producing region unlocked versions of many drives' firmware. All the common drives are here, and a few of the less well known - it's an Aladdin's cave of flash firmware.
For my drive they list ten different firmware versions, all based on Plextor's upgrades that have been subsequently modified. The zip file I downloaded there contained the new firmware an installation application. Unzip the files, run the application, reboot the computer, and wake up to the bright new world of region locking free drives.
It's that simple. Some drives use slightly more complicated procedures, but instructions are usually clear, and most are frighteningly easy. Not all drives are listed, and a few have limitations to the hack, but for most it's a working solution.
All you then need to do is use a tool like DVD Genie or DVD Region Killer (freeware) to avoid software region locking.
The DVD Regions
1. Canada, United States, and U.S. territories
2. Japan, Middle East, South Africa, Western Europe
3. East Asia, Southeast Asia
4. Australia, Caribbean islands, Central America, Mexico, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, South America
5. Africa, Eastern Europe, India, Mongolia, North Korea
6. China
7. Reserved
8. Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, and so forth)
Regards