Regional Codes on DVDs

[bluemicrobyte]

My friend at my school has a japanese DVD and she wants to be able to watch it. She knows almost nothing of regional codes. I know very little about regional codes. Help please?

(for those of you who couldn't get the point my question is: How do you watch a Japanese DVD in America if the DVD has a regional code thingy on it?)

[XTERMIN8OR1]

You mean like PAL and NTSC?

[Uuugggg]

Nah, whoever marketed DVDs internationally made regional codes, damn stupid things. It's so that a DVD released in US (Region 1) can't be viewed with EU DVD players (2) or Japanese, (3 or 4, I dunno), though they *could* buy a region 1 DVD player from Amazon... In any case, a computer should be able to play any region, just make sure it's not a permanent change. Also, I think most DVD players have the ability to play any region code, you just have to know how to tell it to do so...

So, uh, playing it on a computer would be easiest.

[Moser]

It's so easy to watch Japanese DVDs in America. Just buy a Japanese DVD player. :P

[bluemicrobyte]

Could you elaborate on playing it on a computer?

[Uuugggg]

Hmm, not really, I've only once put in different region # DVD. It popped up a message and said it would change the computer's region code, but it will only change it four more times whenever I put a DVD with a different code. Stupid, right? Yes, stupid region codes.

[bluemicrobyte]

oh thats what the region thingie on my DVD drive is.
so the only way would be to do that or get a japanese dvd player?

[ZombieKing]

Just do what I did, since I get a lot of imported japanese animae from one of my friends I just put a second DVD drive into my computer and set the regions accordingly, so that one drive is north american and the other is japanese, the best part is it only cost me about 45 dollars....money well spent.

[bluemicrobyte]

can a japanese DVD rom drive read american COMPUTER cds and dvds?

[WeekendLazyness]

You can change the region code on your computer, but only a limited number of times.

[Exedore]

You could potentially flash the ROM on your DVD drive to change the region label, but that's not recommended for the novice.