I really do wish manufacturers would go back to having RPC-1 DVD drives. I've had to reflash loads of friend's drives because they've ran out of changes and got it stuck on some bizarre region which isn't the local one. *grumble*

- Trevor

I saw this on ebay, but there is some kind of master code that you can enter into your dvd player that makes it region free. All you have to do is press a bunch of buttons and works for a majority of the players out there.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3309079961&category=617

I've never bought this thing, but thought was interesting, and for the price, you wouldn't lose too much if it didn't work.

Yeah. The list of codes and what you need to press is available for free if you look for it.
Making a DVD-ROM drive region free is slightly more difficult because most of them have to be reflashed with a RPC-1 firmware which doesn't do the region checking within the drive. Recently though you'd have to wait for somebody familar with assembler for the particular microcontroller inside your DVD drive to hack it as no new drives are being made with RPC-1 firmware. There was some agreement a while back where all the manufacturers decided that all drives should be RPC-2 and implement the region code checking within the drive itself.

It's all because my friends don't quite understand the meaning of region codes and how you're limited to a certain number of changes before it's permanent. I've got no idea where they're even finding these wierd DVD discs. The majority of my collection is region 2 (UK/Europe) and a couple region 1 (US) ones.

- Trevor

perhaps it is listed here?
http://www.regionfreedvd.net/player

It's a DVD-ROM drive for a computer, not a DVD player. You have to reflash it to make it region free.

- Trevor

I've got no idea where they're even finding these wierd DVD discs
Is it possibly that they are running files from Kazaa that are region-encoded?

-Biscuits

Ah. I've asked one of them and it turns out she's got discs which are multiregion and she selected one at random.

- Trevor