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DVD Region Code? | ||
Tags: DVD | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio |  | |
| SueK Groupie United States Joined 4754 days ago 77 posts - 133 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 11 13 March 2012 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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How are folks getting around this issue? I want to be able to watch movies filmed with native Mandarin speakers, which apparently means region 3 (Hong Kong) or 6 (China).
Is there a player I can buy that plays both? If I buy a couple of cheap CD drives for my PC, does that solve the problem, or does the region code not live in the device itself? I am NOT AT ALL computer savy, so hacking is not an option I want to have to pursue. Anxious to buy some movies in my TL, but want to ensure I can then watch them! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4681 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 2 of 11 13 March 2012 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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If I'm correct, only "living room DVD players" (I mean, just like VHS players, not "computer DVD players") are zoned.
I've never had any problem playing the DVDs bought in China on my laptop, but perhaps because I bought them from these "doesn't look very legal" shops. (I know people here are very copyright aware, but I know of no Chinese person who ever bought a DVD from the official market. Plus if you want movies that have been censored, then you'll definitely have to go to those shops, if ever you travel to China...). May be easier to buy them from Taiwan I suppose. Also, Wikipedia indicates that older players were region free but newer may enforce it unless they're flashed. Nowadays everybody flashes everything (the so-called "jailbreaking" of the fruit-branded phone..), so if your DVDs don't work, you'll probably find some friend to help you flashing your player. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5194 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 3 of 11 14 March 2012 at 7:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Just use VLC player on your mac, PC, or even ipad/android device. It ignores the region codes, as well as those annoying previews and phony FBI warnings at the start of the DVD.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4681 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 4 of 11 14 March 2012 at 8:19am | IP Logged | ||
From Wikipedia you get that now new readers (as I've mentioned in my post above) "enforce" regions at a hardware level. VLC being on the software part, no matter how permissive it is, if the problem is on the hardware VLC won't be able to read anything and your only option will be to flash the firmware. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SueK Groupie United States Joined 4754 days ago 77 posts - 133 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 11 14 March 2012 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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So....if I get an external drive and run it using a VLC player, than the drive might get stuck on a region, but the pc (and it's existing drive) won't?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6922 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 11 14 March 2012 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Go to e-bay and search for "region free" players. I just bought one for under $125.00 that will play DVDs from regions 0-5 and Blu-Rays from regions A, B and C. Make sure that they have a PAL converter to display the image on a U.S. television. Also, some laptops computer will play disks from other regions. However, after several uses, your computer make become "locked" into a certain region.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5962 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 11 14 March 2012 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
PCs will let you change the region code about 4-6 times. I play all my foreign movie DVDs on my computer. If changing more than 4-6 times becomes an issue, then I would buy an external DVD drive so the PC internal DVD drive would play say region 3 DVDs and the external one region 6. However I have multiple laptops so have never had to buy an external drive. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6946 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 8 of 11 14 March 2012 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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See if the VLC player will allow you to play it on your computer. If any other software pops up, don't let it change the region of the drive. Note that this may work on some computers, but not all.
You can also search for 'region free DVD player' on Amazon. Finally, www.videohelp.com has useful information. Edited by frenkeld on 14 March 2012 at 11:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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