Making PCs region free

Is there a way I can change my laptop to play dvds of all regions? I imagine a software download of some sort.

Not sure about making it totally region free but most DVD players will allow you to change the region. The only problem is there's a limit of how many times you can do that, which I think is 5 per DVD player.

My DVD drive on my PC is multi-region, and runs on PowerDVD, which is a very good program, IMO.

I can't say for sure that installing PowerDVD will help, but it might. You may have to replace the drive, though.

If you are comfortable with reflashing the firmware of your laptop DVD-Drive, then you can find the correct firmwares on this forum: http://forum.rpc1.org
Warning: A wrong firmware / bad flashing or mistake will break your drive.

To find which one to use, you need the exact model of your drive (Example: MATSH_ITA DVD-RAM UJ-822S on my T43 IBM Thinkpad) and search for that on the forum. The model name is available in Windows in the "Device Manager" under DVD/CD-Rom drives.

Edit: MATSH_ITA because without the _ it gets censored.

VLC Media Player can play any region, as far as I know. I don't much care for WinMP.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AtomicKitKat

VLC Media Player can play any region, as far as I know.

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I second VLC Media Player - I've got different region DVDs and they've all worked fine with it. It's also a really easy media player to use.

I thought this was a problem when I got my first DVD drive. Then I got some little program called DVD Region Free, and with that and PowerDVD it works just fine. I didn't have to use any special software in my new machine though.
I still don't know why manufacturers bother with that kind of stuff...It's just to annoy their customers, and little else :smallannoyed:

it is to appease the license fairys of course, do you know ANYTHING!?

If I recall correctly PowerDVD alone didn't allow me to watch all the regions I wanted. But then I never delved too deeply into it so its more than possible that I missed things.