Power DVD Regional hacks

[Shady]

Evening Chaps

Just bought myself a DVD/CD-Rom which is sitting burbling away at my knees at the moment.

It's a Liteon 16 speed DVD and 48 speed CD-Rom, bought from a computer fair in Coventry for the princely sum of £32...

I bought it to access DVD-Rom material squiralled away on our favourite DVD's

Anyway, to get to the point, has anybody got any hacks, codes or cheats in order for me to reset the regional coding.

At present it is set to America, region 1, but advises me that I have 4 changes left.

As I have purchased said item fair and square, not off the back of a lorry, why can I not enjoy the DVD-Rom extras on my collection of Region 1 and 2 disks, After all I have bought these fair and square also.


Help - anyone got any patches, cheats, codes, hacks etc. If you cannot publish them on the site send me a PM or a link to a suitable web site.

Cheers in advance.


Shady

[Gary]

Hi Shady,

To change the region on your dvd rom there are two things you must do.

As standard dvd rom drives are supplied as RPC2, ie region protected, you normally have to flash the drive to make it RPC1, unprotected.

To do this go here, www.digital-digest.com and find the firmware page.

better still try this
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/do...mwarepage.html

it appears that you may be in luck.


Note there is always some risk with flashing these drives, it is done at your own risk.

Secondly you need some software, say DVDGenie to change the region.

To do this go here, www.doom9.org

Gary




Gary

[RichardH]

I've successfully flashed a couple of the Liteon 163s. Use something like cdvdinfo to find out exactly which model you have, then flash away. I used this site to get all the stuff I needed.

[Taz]

Had the exact same probs myself before I got a copy of WinDVD2000 now no matter what region the disc (even RCE) the PC asks me do i want to change region and away I go.

IMHO a great bit of software



Taz.

[General Skanky]

....and if the worst comes to the worst, you can buy a multi region ready player from www.overclockers.co.uk It's the Pioneer 106S model for £41 incl. VAT.

[Shady]

Thanks for the responses chaps - I will try some of these when I get home tonight.

Is the WinDVD2000 software are downloadable freeware piece of kit or an off the shelf product ?


Once again, many thanks

[Garrett]

Hi I was thinking of getting a DVD region free myself and starting a thread, as I to saw the DVD at Overclockers, I thought some makes of DVD’s you could make them region free and even disable macrovision (for use with projectors) with software. Is this no longer so? I seem to remember a couple of years back you could alter the region code a number of times before it set itself at one region only.

[RichardH]

As I understand it, there are two levels of protection they use.

Hardware - the drives themselves are limited to changing region 5 times. These are known as RPC2 drives. Most of the firmware hacks used convert these drives back to RPC1 - not region restricted.

Then, the operating system has a similar function, where you can only change the region 5 times. This is where programs such as DVDGenie come in. They can launch on insertion of a DVD, detect the region, pass this info to your preferred software player (WinDVD, PowerDVD, etc) and then launch said player, preventing the OS from setting the region.

I think that's how it is goes....

[Garrett]

Originally posted by RichardH
I've successfully flashed a couple of the Liteon 163s. Use something like cdvdinfo to find out exactly which model you have, then flash away. I used this site to get all the stuff I needed.

How quite is the Liteon 163s, I have a 2 CD drives one is on its way out but I can hardly hear it the other is better but I can hear it whizzing up to speed then slowing down afterwards, which in the middle of a game spoils the concentration and brings me back in to the real world.
I see the Liteon 163s is reasonably priced how do you go about flashing it.

[RichardH]

They do whizz up a lot when at full chat, but they're renown for being quiet when playing DVDs. Maybe not so good for gaming - sounds like someone's got the hoover out. (Side issue - the person who invents a reasonably priced, quiet vacuum cleaner will (ahem) clean up, IMHO.

Having said that, I got a Sony 1621 a while back (retail pack, similar price to the Liteon - from ebuyer - looks like they've increased the price now), and it's nice and quiet even when spinning fast, plus the drawer comes out a lot more smoothly. Multiregion no prob, too.

Multiregion the Liteon - PM me if you need the chapter and verse, but basically the steps are:
1: Use a util such as cdvdinfo to find out the precise frmware version you have.
2: Go to http://www.firmware.fr.st/ and search for your drive. The Liteons have several flavours of firmware - find the right one.
3: Boot into DOS, and run the command line util.
3a: Keep fingers crossed.
4: Shout hooray!

[michaelm]

I've got an Asus E616 drive and it has a hardware region counter reset, which means I can reset the region as many times as I want without having to hack the drive's firmware (thus protecting my warranty).

All I do is press play and stop buttons on the drive when I'm powering up the pc and, once my ide devices are detected, let go. Bob's your auntie. I just hope it's dvd-r/rw compatible.

[rob j]

Originally posted by RichardH
Multiregion the Liteon - PM me if you need the chapter and verse, but basically the steps are:
1: Use a util such as cdvdinfo to find out the precise frmware version you have.
2: Go to http://www.firmware.fr.st/ and search for your drive. The Liteons have several flavours of firmware - find the right one.
3: Boot into DOS, and run the command line util.
3a: Keep fingers crossed.
4: Shout hooray!

How do you exit to DOS on a windows XP pc?? I cannot find how to do this??

Please help!!!

Originally posted by rob j
How do you exit to DOS on a windows XP pc?? I cannot find how to do this??

Please help!!!

You can't. You need to create an MS-DOS boot disk. Then boot from that and flash the DVD-ROM drive (you can put the flash files on the same disk).

Right-click the 3.5 inch floppy icon in My Computer, choose Format, and then check the 'Create an MS-DOS startup disk option' and click Start. Alternatively, you can download a program from the web to make a MS_DOS boot disk.

I flashed my DVD-ROM drive a while ago so that I could use the DVD-ROM stuff on non-R2 DVDs. Works great in conjunction with DVD Region Killer (http://elby.ch/english/fun/software/)

[rob j]

ok thanks -

[rob j]

now then I have got a Fujitsu Siemens Computer.

The cdvdinfo tool tells me;

firmware revision: GIH3

Now the only firmware patch for download on the site is the GIH2

Will I be able to use this patch or not with me Fujitsu Siemens computer, or will I have to wait untill a patch becomes available??