Daily Mail Free DVD film!

[smudge]

I thought I'd just try out the free DVD 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' film, received from the Daily Mail. You've guessed - it won't play! The Region Playback Control is showing 'Western Europe, South Africa & Japan. The DVD has (2) on the back, whereas my other ones have a (1) if that makes sense. Can I change the settings to allow me to play it? If not it was never really a 'freebie' after all was it!

[Mad Doctor]

If your other DVDs have a (1) on the back, they were manufactured and encoded for use on North American and Canadian DVD players. As you say, the number (2) on the freebie indicates that it is manufactured and encoded with the intention of it being played on a UK DVD player. Since the Daily Mail is a British newspaper, I think it's safe and reasonable for them to assume that most of their readers who own DVD players, own players that are "Region 2".

[gerry]

What you could do is put your make and model of dvd player and you can either put hack or code and do a search for it on the net. Usually there will be a code that you can input via your remote control and it will ask you to set the region code i would choose region 0 because that means your player will play any region now.I did this with my Philips dvd player and have had no problems because i own region 1& 2 dvd's

[Hippy]

Be careful with these hack codes as the internal workings of the DVD player only allows a fixed number of atempts at changing the region. Exceed the number and it is stuck in whatever state the last change dictated. This is, as far as I know, irreversible.

[smorodina]

The fixed number of changes only really applies to pc DVD drives. The majority of stand alone players available in the UK can be set to region 0 (as Gerry said) and this means that they will play disks from any region. This can be done by a keyboard hack with many, but if not you can get a new chip put in to perform the same task. There are a lot of hacks on this site: http://www.dvdrhelp.com/ see the link in the menu on the left. I know there are other sites too if your player is not listed here. I'm not sure about the PC drives in this respect though.

[smudge]

Hi all, just acknowledging your replies with many thanks. I downloaded a free-regional playback programme from the Internet, then realised it was a 30 day free trial! I then removed this programme, rebooted & found that 'Power DVD' now plays both regional 1&2 DVD-CD roms! Don't ask me how as I thought it would revert back to just playing one! Could anyone thro' any light on that one - not that I'm complaining!! Cheers!