This little gem is all Hollywoods fault and is an excellent example of how executives can screw up a good idea. DVD was originally developed to be the first truly universal format, any DVD would play anywhere, regardless of TV format. Cool huh?
The Hollywood studios were not at all impressed at this prospect. Traditionally movies are released in the U.S. first then around the rest of the world over a few months. Therefore people outside the U.S. would be able to buy movies on DVD before they appeared at their local cinema. Surely this can't be a problem?
The problem with this is that different companies handle the same film around the world. 20th Century Fox bankrolled Titanic, it was released in America by Paramount and Fox handled the rest of the world. If you buy an American Titanic DVD to watch in Europe Foxes money goes into Paramounts pockets.
So, to try and prevent this region coding was devised. The world was split into 6 regions, with America being region 1. Each DVD made uses a single byte to indicate what region it is for. If a DVD player checks this and sees that its own region code doesn't match the one on the DVD disc, then the film refuses to play.
Region 1 DVDs have a larger selection, usually have more features and are cheaper. As you can imagine, people outside region 1 weren't to impressed with this. As a result a back room business developed to bypass DVD region protection.
Some DVD players are easier to modify than others. Again, this is related the Hollywood studios. Sony owns Coloumbia-Tristar, which is a major Hollywood studio and there all in favour of region coding. On the other hand Pioneer players are easy to modify.
| Region | Countries |
|---|---|
| 0 | No Restriction |
| 1 | USA, Canada and US Territories |
| 2 | Europe, Middle East (including Egypt), South Africa and Japan |
| 3 | South East Asia and East Asia (include Hong Kong) |
| 4 | Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands and Caribbean |
| 5 | Russian Federation, Africa (not Egypt, but also North Korea and Mongolia), India and Pakistan |
| 6 | China |
| 7 | Reserved |
| 8 | Special International Venues. Planes, Cruise ships... |
So now we know where this annoyance came from, what can we do about it. Fortunately we can bypass the region code check on various systems and using different techniques. The rest of this document will briefly discuss some popular techniques for bypassing region coding on different platforms. This is not an exhaustive or comprehensive guide, but it should get you headed in the right direction.
It is very easy to buy a multi region DVD player these days. This is because some models of DVD player have no region checking at all, others can switch regions by entering a code on the remote, and others can be easily modified (chipped) to automatically switch region to match the inserted DVD disc.
There are plenty of companies around the world who will sell you a chipped multi region DVD player and they will even cover the original manufactures warranty! So, my advice to anyone buying a DVD player, is to search for a local dealer that offers this service or buy a DVD player which is multi region by design.
OK, so you have just bought a DVD player and acquired a DVD from a region different to your own and discovered this region coding crap the hard way. You may still be in luck as some models of DVD player can be fitted with a multi region mod chip.
Techtronics.com are on online company based in Ireland who specialize in selling chipped/multi region DVD players and mod chip kits. Plus they delivery all over the world.
My only affiliation with Techtronics.com is as a satisfied customer. My friends and I have all bought equipment from Techtronics.com and have been very satisfied with the service provided. If you are looking for a new DVD player this is a good place to start, even if it is just for information gathering. If you are looking to region free an existing DVD player then you should definitely take a look. Another good source of information on region freeing an existing player is...
In the good old days DVD-ROM drives for computers were region free, these types of DVD-ROM drives are called RPC-1 or Phase 1. All good things must come to an end and now (nearly) all new DVD-ROM drives have region coded firmware. These drives are called RPC-2 or Phase 2.
Most drives manufactured after January 1st 2000 and some drives prior to that date are installed with RPC-2. RPC-2 drives electronically stores the Region code within drives firmware. The only means of bypassing this kind Region protection is buy applying a firmware patch. So, in conclusion...
You can find out if the DVD-ROM drive in your PC is region protected by using one of the following tools. The screenshots below show examples of region protected and region free drives.
| Drive Region Info 1.1 | CDVDinfo 1.3x |
|---|---|
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In addition to these stand alone tools beth DVD Decrypter 2.4 and DVD Genie 4.0 have DVD RPC tools...
| DVDDecrypter 2.4 | DVD Genie 4.0 |
|---|---|
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If you find that your DVD-ROM drive is region coded then you may still be able to make it region free. This is done by either...
| Proceed With Caution! |
|---|
| Patching your firmware with an unofficial or hacked version can potentially destroy your drive and render it useless. It will also invalidate your manufacturers warranty. |
Having warned you appropriately and will also add that I have successfully flashed/patched two RPC-2 DVD-ROM drives and made them region free. In fact the Matshita DVD-ROM SR-8174 in the Drive Region Info 1.1 screen shot above, was originally an RPC-2 drive.
If you have got an RPC-2 drive and you want to make it region free, then there is is only one place to go...
A firmware patch written for a specific DVD drive model and will only work on that specific model. So be sure you are using a firware patch that is intended for your DVD drive.
There are several DVD/MPEG hardware decoding solutions available that can dramatically improve the playback quality on computer systems. Again, they are region coded and again there are tools to region free them. The most popular by far are...
| Remote Selector 1.7x | Zone Selector 4.2 |
|---|---|
Region frees and removes Macrovision from the following hardware
decoders...
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Region frees and removes Macrovision from the following hardware
decoders...
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If you decoder card is not listed above then don't worry yet, as there is an extensive list of region free tools/utilities at...
There are a number of software DVD players and again they are region coded. Some software DVD players have their own internal region checking, others rely on services provided by the operating system, while others use a combination of both.
There are two very good region freeing utilities for Windows 9x/ME. The first is the ever popular...
DVD Genie can change the region code for just about every main stream software DVD player on the market. Plus, it can also change the region code of the operating system too. A fairly new solution to the region coding issue under Windows 9x/ME is...
DVD Region Killer uses a different technique. Instead of changing the
region of the DVD player it acts as a device driver and intercepts the
data stream from the DVD-ROM drive as it reads the disc. It then finds
the region code and removes it, before passing the data stream onward
to the DVD player. Although some Region 1 titles won't play using DVD
Region Killer this can be worked around by making your PC Region 1 and
then using DVD Region Killer to play non-region 1 titles
;-) I have found DVD Region Killer to be a very simple,
stable and unobtrusive way to region free a Window 9x/Me system.
Again, DVD Genie is the tool to use for Windows 2000. Unfortunately, DVD Region Killer is not supported on Windows 2000. Windows 2000 also stores a region key in the registry, which some DVD players will query. Read the following article to find out how to remove the region key from a Windows 2000 system.
As you can see this annoying region coding issue crops up all over the place and at every juncture there is a technique to bypass it. I hope this article has given you some useful background and helped point you in the right direction to fix your region coding issues.
Recently, there has been a few studios who have released DVD's simultaneously around the world, I can only hope this will become a growing trend.
Some new DVD titles are now have RCE, a more sophistacted implementation of Region Coding. Read DVD Region Code Enhancement article to find out what it is and how it may affect you. A full list a DVD titles which use RCE is also provided.