The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    DVD compatibility

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by cyme5, May 14, 2006.

  1. cyme5

    cyme5 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Sorry for the silly question but if I buy an American laptop will I be able to watch European dvds on it (since I reside in Europe)? Is it possible to make the dvd player region free?

    Thanks for not laughing too much at my questions,

    ME :)
     
  2. sangnom

    sangnom Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    9
    Messages:
    33
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    You wouldn't be able to play different region-locked disks without changing your drives region, which you can usually only do 5 times. You'd have to either use a hacked firmware, or a program such as AnyDVD which would automatically remove region encoding.
     
  3. olifka

    olifka Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    2
    Messages:
    55
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    I use DVD Idle, works well for me (computer is bought from U.S. and set on region 1, but now plays also region 2).
     
  4. Arla

    Arla Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    35
    Messages:
    1,073
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Theoretically you can make a DVD drive region free by flashing the firmware, in practice I've done this to one laptop and it worked just fine, however it could turn your DVD drive into a handy cup holder too.

    Nowadays I prefer using software to accomplish the same task, DVD Idle I find works just fine on both of my recent laptops and allows me to watch any regions DVD.