DVD player region settings?

Has anyone found any software that will play multi-region disks on the DVD drive that comes in the Asus laptops? (In my M5N, it is a Mat****a UJ-812 drive). None of programmes I've seen support that drive for letting it play disks region-free. (Some of them will work with that drive for removing the copyright stuff as long as the region setting matches, but that doesn't help me - I'm not after copying anything, I just want to watch the multi-region disks!). I accidently played my first disk as a region 1 disk, which set the player to that, even though I normally live in a region 2 area. So switching back to that will use up another of my 5 changes. And I regularly travel back and forth between the UK and north america, and would like to watch DVDs in both places. Any ideas on how I can do this? I have been told this is perfectly legal, if there's a way to do it. (I don't want to copy - or even back up - any disks, just watch ones I've rented!!).

One of the software forums included an explanation of why this series of drives was so difficult to make these region-free programmes work, and it didn't sound like there was going to be anything that fixed it any time soon. But I'm hopeful that someone might have an idea?

 

I use DVD region free (http://www.dvdidle.com/). It works great and allows me to watch the Region 1 disks I purchased from Amazon. My drive is set to region 4.
It costs around $40 from memory, but it is well worth it, and comes with free lifetime updates. There is also a 30 day trial period so you can try before you buy!
a


ASUS M6Ne 15.4" WSXGA 1.7 PM ATI9700 80Gb HDD 1Gb RAM

 

But do you have the same drive as in the M5N? The Mat****a UJ-812? Because most of the programmes like region-free, dvdecrypter, AnyDvd, etc, say that they will not work with this particular series of drives (and one or two others).

It'd be great if region-free did work. I've just heard from other people with this drive that it doesn't, so if someone has first hand experience of getting it to work, please let me know how!
cheers.

 

Why don't you download the free 30 day trial and find out?
DVD decryptor is freeware as is DVD shrink, they are stable and very simple easy programs. The best way to find out if they work with your dvd drive is to give them ago. Thats the best/only advice I can give.
a


ASUS M6Ne 15.4" WSXGA 1.7 PM ATI9700 80Gb HDD 1Gb RAM

 

Yeah, I'm going to. I'm just not holding my breath, given that I've heard lots of things about how they don't work on this drive. And their sites say they don't support it. And I'm a bit worried about downloading too many things that might interfere when I've finally got some problems sorted out and stable...
Just hoping someone here might have already been through this issue and discovered that they will/won't work, or that there is some new programme that's finally sorted the issue out, etc. There seem to be three particular series of drives that are 'more secure' than the others, and have so far resisted attempts to make them region free by software or firmware. I think these drives are only used in the really small computers, like in the M5N, and some of the Sony ones.

 

Hi sorry I had never heard of the drive problems before, did a bit of reading and it looks like your up #T$# creek.
The best solution I can offer is to get a cheep DVD +external case which will allow you to backup your dvd's into region free.
My applogies for giving you bad info..sorry
a

ps that is really annoying...I hate the fact that many dvds I want are only released in the states, I can legally purchase them from there but then were treated like criminals for wanting to watch them !


ASUS M6Ne 15.4" WSXGA 1.7 PM ATI9700 80Gb HDD 1Gb RAM

 

Yeah, it doesn't look like I'll have much luck. There are the threads that first alerted me to the problems:
http://www.leog.net/fujp_forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6198 and
http://club.cdfreaks.com/lite/t-101267.html

That second thread has an explanation of why the region-free part of the programme won't work.

However, it seems odd based on my experience just now.

I installed the trial-version of DVD region-free. I then put the region 2 disk in my player (which is accidently set to region 1). It asked me if I wanted to change it to region 2, so I said no. I confirmed that region-free was in fact running, and it was; it just wasn't able to overcome these region coding. So far, so much as I'd expected. Nothing I did with the asus DVD player seemed to make any difference; it just said 'not responding'.

So then, I tried another software player that I have installed, called 'Interactuall'. (It installed itself automatically when I tried playing a disk in NOrth America). Now this still did not work properly. However, it got a lot further. It was extraordinarily slow, but it did manage to show the Miramax screen, the film title, and then the menu page where there were choice of 'view movie', and various extras, taking about 10 minutes in total to get there. All this time, a very slow bitty tune was playing - like a piece of music slowed down so much that you get a note every few seconds. Once it got to the menu screen, then nothing would work, and I couldn't actually click on anything (and task manager said it was 'not responding').

But still, it's obviously not totally hiding the information, is it, like that article claims these drives do. So if it can get that sort of information somehow, you'd think it'd be possible to find some way of letting them play the disks.

Well, I'll keep experimenting. Your idea of getting an external one and just using that is a good one, but mostly I just wanted the change to play multi-region disks when travelling. Occasionally I suppose I might buy one or get sent one from north america, and want to play it, and then I could back it up as you suggest - or just buy a multi-region player for my TV. But it's just frustrating that I can't play them when travelling. I don't want to have to back eveyrhting up or put them on my hard drive or anything, just to rent things sometimes! Not an issue I had any idea about when I chose this laptop (though admittedly, probalby not one that is important enough to have changed my decision...).

 

Still no luck. I've tried all the free ones that I can find, and none of them will work with my drive, no matter which DVD viewing programme I use. Some of them get farther than others, though. So maybe some day someone will figure out a way to make it work! I have for now had to change my region settings and will just stick to UK disks for now.