Travel Technology - DVD regional encoding - extra DVD drive

So I have this old POS IBM T23.
Hmm, let me rephrase it was nice at the time, but not so nice compared to the X42's now.

Anyways, I am running XP and can get an extra DVD drive for the machine.

Is there any problem with just swapping in and out of the multi-bay the extra DVD drive (set to say Region 2) when I want to watch Region 2 DVDs?

e.g. the restriction is set to the drive hardware and XP reads the code?

Thanks.

There are two issues -- one is the drive, and one is Windows.

Most drives can be updated to be region free -- see http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_search.php . Windows or other software DVD players can be reset using DVD Genie (http://www.inmatrix.com/files/dvdgenie_download.shtml) .

Don't worry about another DVD drive. Buy this (http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-region-free.htm) and play whatever whenever. I've been using it for about a year now without a hitch with DVDs from regions 1,2,3 and 4 on a laptop that's hard coded to Region 1 and without this program won't look at any other region's discs.

Or better yet, use this free version:

http://www.dvd43.com/

:)

The drive stores the coding. It may be possible to remove it or reset it. Some of them allow you to change it a fixed number of times.

Anyway, all this is not necessary. You can install some software to get round it. Try:

http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html

There is a free trial for you to try things out. After a while you have to pay.

For more information take a look at:

www.afterdawn.com

There are some free utilities around to handle this kind of problem.

(Its a real annoyance to me: in this world of easily obtained bootleg fake DVDs you can walk intoa legit shop in London and pay GBP30 for a DVD and then not watch it where you want to.)

I wouldn't have to pay for an extra DVD drive. We just have tons lying around.


I don't want to have to re-rip the DVD just to watch it. Most of what I want to watch is low grade Asian movies so I don't want to futz too much.

So is their a free software player that ignores regional encoding?
or I can just swap in and out the DVD drive depending on which one that I am watching?

Portability not an issue as this will be a secondary at home crap machine

Do the firmware hack on one of the DVD drives. Given that they're old, they should be easy to patch to be region free. Then, use DVD-Genie with your dvd player program (it's free) and you can multi-region to your heart's content... totally free. Just swapping the drives won't help you as the DVD software will still choke on the different region. DVD Genie might also help there as well, i'm not sure as I haven't tried it.

I use DVDIdle Pro as it bypass Regional Encoding and caches the DVD to RAM so it helps with my battery-life.

AnyDVD is also a good application.

But yes, setting one DVD to Region 1 and the other to Region 2 and swapping them as needed to play DVDs from the appropriate region will work.

I wholeheartedly agree with the ones that recommend the dvd43 program. It is free and works very well at getting around the region codes so you can play any DVD you want on your laptop.

--DD73