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Hi. I was wondering what possibility there might be for a cool guy like me, running Fedora Core 1 on an IBM Thinkpad R40, being able to play Region 2 ...
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  1. 02-11-2005 #1
    Sean Gray
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    Regional freedom

    Hi. I was wondering what possibility there might be for a cool guy like me, running Fedora Core 1 on an IBM Thinkpad R40, being able to play Region 2 DVDs. Can I just go into some settings thing somewhere and switch regions, or am I gonna have to download some software to do it properly?

    Keep in mind that I haven't actually tried playing any Region 2 DVDs yet, as I don't have any. But I am interested in picking up a copy of the English sit-com Spaced, and would like to know if this is even possible before I spend my money. Thanks.
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  2. 02-11-2005 #2
    techieMoe
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    Some DVD players (and I *assume* DVD-ROM drives as well) give you the ability to change regions, however usually you can only do it a set number of times.

    I've been told that Region 0 players will play any region, so if you could swap your drive's region, that would give you the ability to play them on your lappie.

    I don't know if there's a software mechanism to decode that, but in general to play DVDs in Linux you're going to need something like libdvdcss. It's a legally gray area though.. so I won't pursue that any further.
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  3. 02-11-2005 #3
    Sean Gray
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    Well, I'm already quite well acquainted with libdvdcss (wink wink, nudge nudge, say n'more), and am capable of playing DVD on my laptop. Where would I hypothetically go from there?

    How does one swap regions?
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  4. 02-11-2005 #4
    techieMoe
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    Usually it's an option available from your DVD drive's vendor, involving some sort of remote control aerobics (for DVD players) or a firmware update (for drives).. I'd start by figuring out what drive your lappie has (model, serial number) and doing a google search for firmware updates.

    "Does your computer like... games? Wink, wink, nudge nudge..."
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  5. 02-12-2005 #5
    Sean Gray
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    Yes, I'd say it does...
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  6. 02-14-2005 #6
    psic
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    As far as I know, with the mentioned lib. you can play dvd from any region. My dvd's are all region 2, as I'm from europe, but once I borrowed a dvd that was region 1. It didn't run in windows (it gave me the choice of switching regions on my dvd drive, which you can only do like 5 times). I booted into linux and the dvd worked fine I think I used Xine (with Kaffeine) but Mplayer should work as well.
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  7. 02-15-2005 #7
    Sean Gray
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    Really? Sweet. No problem, then.
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