The Energon Pub

Fri Aug 03, 2007 9:37 am

brought my pioneer dvd player years ago when dvds were just starting up....region free from factory.

Fri Aug 03, 2007 1:52 pm

so, if your dvd player is region free (either by hack or design) do you need anything for the dvd's to look right on your tv? I've never tried this but I have heard that foreign dvds and tapes don't look right on american tvs. just wondering before I go out and get a player and the uk sets...

News Credits: 767 · Fri Aug 03, 2007 3:13 pm

I hered that PC acepet any region is that true?

Fri Aug 03, 2007 4:36 pm

Dead Metal wrote:I hered that PC acepet any region is that true?

Not so buddy.

My last laptop, a Compaq, as aweome as it was, made you CHOSE which region you would play, and ONLT THAT region. You had I think 4 back-and-forths before the compter LOCKED your region in permenantly.

My Toshiba has a Matsushita drive, so, so far, it reads Japanese DVDs just fine. I don't know about anything other than regions 1 and 2. Those are the only films I care to see...

News Credits: 767 · Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:12 am

YouFearGalvatron wrote:
Dead Metal wrote:I hered that PC acepet any region is that true?

Not so buddy.

My last laptop, a Compaq, as aweome as it was, made you CHOSE which region you would play, and ONLT THAT region. You had I think 4 back-and-forths before the compter LOCKED your region in permenantly.

My Toshiba has a Matsushita drive, so, so far, it reads Japanese DVDs just fine. I don't know about anything other than regions 1 and 2. Those are the only films I care to see...

F***!
Well, I'll have to keep sercing then.

News Credits: 3 · Sun Sep 02, 2007 1:43 am

Is there a list somewhere of other players that can be made region-free, and what the hacks are, other than the Phillips one?

News Credits: 1 · Sun Sep 02, 2007 3:45 am

I have a very basic Oritron DVD player I bought from Wal-Mart for maybe $20 and it plays Headmasters, Masterforce, Victory, & Zone with absolutely NO problems at all on my 55" LCD.
All 4 of those DVD sets are region 2 and PAL. It seems I bought a region-free, format-free DVD player without even knowing it!

News Credits: 3 · Tue Sep 04, 2007 10:41 pm

iron maniac wrote:I have a very basic Oritron DVD player I bought from Wal-Mart for maybe $20 and it plays Headmasters, Masterforce, Victory, & Zone with absolutely NO problems at all on my 55" LCD.
All 4 of those DVD sets are region 2 and PAL. It seems I bought a region-free, format-free DVD player without even knowing it!

What model number is it? I'll happily drop $20 to get a dvd player that will let me watch these!

Also, my dvd player is a Phillips DVD622. Anyone know of any hacks for that one?

News Credits: 1 · Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:49 pm

MagnusPrimal wrote:What model number is it? I'll happily drop $20 to get a dvd player that will let me watch these!

Also, my dvd player is a Phillips DVD622. Anyone know of any hacks for that one?

I've been looking and I don't see a model number on it. I can take a pic of it.
Its just a small Oritron unit, we bought it at Wal-Mart for my daughter to watch cartoons on because it was cheap. It requires no hacks, it just plays the discs no matter what format or region with no problems. Great little unit.

News Credits: 1 · Wed Sep 05, 2007 2:47 am

I found the Oritron DVD player online by the picture:
Oritron DVD-100

That pic is exactly what mine looks like.

It has component video outputs as well as S-Video output. We've had it for almost 4 years and it plays just about ANYTHING without hacks. I have it hooked up to a 55" LCD and Headmasters looks great on it.

It looks like it is hard to find now.
My guess is that the cat must be out of the bag about this unit being so universal as to what DVDs it can play.

Hope this helps.

Wed Oct 17, 2007 7:53 pm

this has changed my dvd buying habits forever lol. i never had any foreighn transformers DvDs but i thought what the hell ive got a region 1 copy of jeepers creepers that i picked up accidentally at the market lol. so i did the code and it worked cos it jus some cheap nasty dvd player i got from asda (Walmart) i was no longer restricted to buyin dvds from my own region an ive got addicted to buyin stuff from america thru play.com cos i can get stuff b4 it comes out here cheaper and with free delivery too lol. all i can say is Heroes Series 1 and robot chicken r freakin awesome lol random ramble over!

Wed Oct 24, 2007 5:51 pm

Optimist_Prime wrote:http://www.world-import.com/dvd.htm?OVRAW=region%20free%20player&OVKEY=region%20free%20player&OVMTC=standard&OVADID=6618804511&OVKWID=38549816511
For those of you who want an easy, and fairly inexpensive way, here are some Region-Free DVD Players

Thanx for the link. I'm going on a buying spree now.

Fri Nov 09, 2007 1:00 pm

Anyone been able to hack a DVD/VCR unit? If so, what make and model do you have? The one I have doesn't seem to have a hack anywhere.

News Credits: 1 · Mon Nov 26, 2007 1:26 pm

Hey, I've been looking into buying a Region Free DVD player. Where can I find one? I would really like to be able to watch all these Transformer DVDs like Headmasters and Victory.

*Smacks herself* Of course, and this is after I asked Dad to find me a new DVD player for Christmas, and of all brands I told him to get me a Sony. Hopefully he hasn't gone out to buy one yet, then I can tell him if he can find one that's Region Free.

News Credits: 972 · Wed Nov 28, 2007 7:07 pm

TRANS+CRAZY wrote:Hey, I've been looking into buying a Region Free DVD player. Where can I find one? I would really like to be able to watch all these Transformer DVDs like Headmasters and Victory.

*Smacks herself* Of course, and this is after I asked Dad to find me a new DVD player for Christmas, and of all brands I told him to get me a Sony. Hopefully he hasn't gone out to buy one yet, then I can tell him if he can find one that's Region Free.

If you get the Madman versions of Headmasters (and Victory and Masterforce when they are released), then you can play them in any DVD player worldwide as they are region free releases.

News Credits: 1 · Mon Dec 31, 2007 10:58 am

Seibertron wrote:
ZoneDaiatlas wrote:
Seibertron wrote:For those of you with laptops or PCs that you want to be regionless, it's fairly easy to make your DVD player on your computer region free as well. Of course, that might depend on the DVD player that came with your system, but I was able to get mine on my Dell laptop to become region free fairly easy.

The best solution is downloading "VLC Media Player" and it will play any region on your computer...

I disagree. The best solution is just to make your player region free, which mine is, then you can use Windows Media Player or whatever other program you normally use to watch DVDs on your computer.

Ryan, I am horribly confused

. Ok, I just got a Dell XPS M1530 for X-mas. I must be missing somthing here because you you said watching anything other than NTSC formatted discs using WMP or other media software and you'll be ok. However the region on the actual drive can only changed 5 times(at least on XP, I don't know about Vista)? Could someone help clear this up?

Sat Feb 02, 2008 11:06 pm

Another good easily modified DVD player is the Philips DVP5960.

Plug it in, open the tray, go into the setup menu, scroll to preferences, and then push 138931. It'll give you a set of to move up and down for region. Choose whatever region you want, or region 0.

Sun Feb 03, 2008 4:34 pm

I just got my Madman Headmaster DVDs and they play w/o a code in my Phillips DVP-3140. It also plays DivX which is very nice.

Thu Apr 10, 2008 4:35 pm

Maaaaaaaaaaaan, I'd be so grateful to anyone who would "tweak" my dvd drive to play multizones. It really ticked me off the local computer guy who's known for all kinds of under the table shenanigans, he didnt' want to mod my DVD because he was affraid he'd get busted (apparently it's illegal down in NZL!), the guy has thousands of pirated movies and music and he won't alter my drive so I can buy DVDs from other regions? Seesh!

I knew a guy who modded PS2s to play multi zones, but he was like the proverbial back alley butcher with a coat hanger. Not entrusting that nut job with my PS2!

But its a horrid nusiance in NZL, my bro bought a MZ DVD player for a heafty sum and it still won't play American bought DVDs.

Wed May 28, 2008 3:45 pm

In regards to all the people who're asking if it's true that computer DVD drives are region free and being told it's not, that's only half the story. While it is true that out of the box, most DVD dives are region locked, it's also largely irrelvant.

The same techniques that are used to create unlicesed open source DVD playback software allow you to bypass region encoding. So, if you have a computer with a DVD drive, simply get VLC or another player that uses the libdvdcss code and you're good to go. There are lots of region free software players out there, but I recommend VLC because it plays pretty much everything and can transcode, stream, etc. It's like a video swiss army knife and it's open source, so it's legitimately free.

On a related note, just because your DVD player plays the MadMan stuff doen't mean it's region free. MadMan is cool and made region free TF releases, so they can be played anywhere, as long as your player can handle PAL.

All of that said, I really appreciate this info. While I'm pretty aware of the computer end of the DVD hacking scene, I had no idea that (some) hardware players where so easy to unlock.

I play my DVDs on a PS2 and dispite the somtimes picky behavior of the the drive, I've rather enjoyed it so far. (I love the remote.) However, NTSC PS2s won't convert PAL video even if region unlocked. So I'm looking to get a dedicated player.

I want something cheap, reliable, region free (or hackable), plays NTSC and PAL, and good looking. Can anyone give me a recommendation. Also, now that the high-def format war is over, I've been thinking about Blu-Ray, so any suggestions on that front would be appreciated as well.

Thanks in advance.

News Credits: 462 · Sun Nov 09, 2008 1:55 pm

Now with all this talk about hacking DVD players, what about Blu-Ray players? Are they region free, or do they need to be hacked too?

Since Blu-Ray is starting to become as popular as DVD, we could be looking at the replacement for DVDs.

Sat Jul 25, 2009 11:21 am

If you don't want to buy a new dvd player go to http://www.dvdhacks.co.uk/ and check to see if they have a hack for the player you already have. They cover most brands and models.

The also have a list of BluRay players as well

News Credits: 3646 · Tue Feb 02, 2010 12:13 am

lightsyder wrote:so, if your dvd player is region free (either by hack or design) do you need anything for the dvd's to look right on your tv? I've never tried this but I have heard that foreign dvds and tapes don't look right on american tvs. just wondering before I go out and get a player and the uk sets...

It doesn't matter if the DVD is NTSC or PAL ... it will work fine on your TV as long as the player is region free.

News Credits: 2 · Mon May 17, 2010 6:04 pm

Well it's nice to know that you can make your DVD player region free without having to spend extra money!

I've been looking into buying the hilarious RTM 1 dubs for a while now and, once I get the money I'll be buying the DVD's and playing them on my DVD player!

News Credits: 3646 · Mon May 17, 2010 7:06 pm

Vectorsigma100 wrote:Well it's nice to know that you can make your DVD player region free without having to spend extra money! I've been looking into buying the hilarious RTM 1 dubs for a while now and, once I get the money I'll be buying the DVD's and playing them on my DVD player!

What kind of player do you have?