DVD Regional Restrictions Software?

[Loki3]

My girlfriend who is from Norway brought over a DVD for us to watch that someone from home sent her. I popped into my PS2 and got the error, "DVD won't play due to regional restricitons".

I won't even get into my philsophical thoughts on this but I'd like to be able to watch this DVD. I remember a year ago some kid wrote some software that might possibily allow me to do this. Does anyone know the name of the software or where I might learn more about it.

Thanks.

[frimann]

I am able to watch different region DVDs on my computer with Xine and TV out, just have to install libdvdcss, Xine doesent seem to care about the region.


From: http://freshmeat.net/projects/libdvdcss/

" libdvdcss is a cross-platform library for transparent DVD device access with on-the-fly CSS decryption. It currently runs under Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, BeOS, Win95/Win98, Win2k/WinXP, MacOS X, HP-UX, QNX, and OS/2. It is used by libdvdread and most DVD players such as VLC because of its portability and because, unlike similar libraries, it does not require your DVD drive to be region locked."

[Loki3]

Hmmm. I don't have a DVD player on my computer. I just have a Play Station2 game console. I was hoping there was some secrect voodoo solution like, "Pop that sucker in the cd drive, spin in backwards exactly 902.5 degrees while chanting 'MPAA, all your bases belong to us'."

Guess it's not that simple, eh? Oh well. Thanks anyways.

[mrBen]

DVD regional encoding is normall dependent on a couple of things - hardware and software. It is likely that the hardware in your PS2 is retricted to playing only a single region; there may be a way to chip it, but I don't know, and I don't ask ;)

[DMR]

I found a product called "DVD Region X" being sold on Amazon.com's UK site, you might want to check it out:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005MFQ7/ps2home-21/202-2064974-2261456

The product might not be available in some countries due to legal restrictions; I don't know for sure.


We don't allow discussion of hardware or software cracks here, but since the following seems to me to be more a discovery of an undocumented PS2 feature, I'll mention it:

I saw an article a while ago which described a way to use certain keys on the PS2 controller to access the region control settings on the PS2; basically, it was a question of holding down certain combinations of buttons as the movie loaded. The article was specifically related to PS2's sold in Japan, so I'm not even sure they would work universally. Sorry I can't give you more on that, but I don't remember where I ran across the article.

[Loki3]

Thanks for the link DMR.

It was never my intention to violate the policies of the forums. If I did so and moderator's feel I should delete this thread than I will (or they will!).

A quick question. Is there such thing as a multi-region DVD player? For example could I buy a DVD stateside that would allow me to play DVD's from any region. I assume such a device would cost more than a DVD player that could only play DVD's from one region.

[DMR]

No problem with the post. You're asking a question which has "non-crack"-related answers, so it's cool.
:)

As for the multi-region players- yes, they do exist, and yes, they'll probably cost a bit more.

[Loki3]

Hmm. I'l probably end up with one of those. The Play Station does a pretty bad job with DVDs as it is.

[quip]

Originally posted by DMR

As for the multi-region players- yes, they do exist, and yes, they'll probably cost a bit more.

I'm sure they cost a lot more. I was glancing through the documentation that came with my new DVD burner a few months ago, and it has the region control built into the hardware (as mentioned above) I can change the region on the drive, but only 5 times in the lifetime of the product.
I have no idea how a game console handles this, but it's probably not worth the risk.
And yes, the fact that this is perfectly acceptable business practice really aggravates me.