US DVDs in UK

[Andrew Bichard]

I have been collecting the 'Walt Disney Treasures' series of DVDs.

These are not available in the United Kingdom (DVD Zone 2 encoded), so I have been buying the mail order from the USA (zone 1 encoded).
Playing these DVDs has been no problem so far, because I have fitted a 'piggyback' chip in my player which enables me to play DVDs from *any* zone.
I understand that the DVD manufacturers have become aware of this trick, and are now adding code to the DVDs themselves to disable this work-around.

Does anyone know if this new blocking software has been added to the about to be released DVDs 'The Complete Goofy' or Mickey Mouse in Black & White'.

It would be a pity not to be able to buy copies of these two DVDs.
(I want to watch them on my TV, not my PC and don't want the expense of buying a new DVD player)

Andrew

 

[pt415999]

We have a dvd purchased in the UK, but managed to "hack" it by following the instructions on this site.

http://www.dvd.reviewer.co.uk/selection.asp

All the dvd's we bought in Florida play as normal, but it did cost about £20 to buy a "all in one remote" from argos, to enable the "hack".
As my wife bought 17 dvd's in Florida, we did save money even with the £20 expense!
And yes, I'm very glad custom's didn't check our bags!!!!

Hope this helps.

 

[Banzai]

I still don't understand why our DVDs won't work in the UK. My gosh, it the same way with VHS vs. PAL.

 

[Goofyish]

Banzai,

When DVD's were invented the main movie studios wanted a way to control the release dates of films to DVD in different parts of the world because films are released to the cinemas at different times. They wanted to maximise there profits from the cinemas before the movies were released to DVD.

So, they decided to divide the world into 'regions'.

Region 1 = USA & Canada
Region 2 = UK & Europe
etc....

They then coded the DVDs with these region codes, so a DVD released in the USA could not be played in Europe; where the movie was still on at the cinemas and not released to DVD yet.

DVD players sold in the UK can only 'officially' play region 2 DVDs, so cannot play DVDs from the USA or Canada.

BUT - these UK machines can be modified or 'chipped' to play any region DVD (some only need a code entered from the remote to make them region free)

To try and stop this 'cheating', some movie studios introduced RCE - region code enhancement. This was supposed to prevent the DVDs playing on region free players - but most players can also be modifed to get round this too

Another littel extra on DVDs is Macrovision. This is designed to stp the DVD being recorded onto video. Again, there are ways to get round this too.

Whether the DVD is NTSC or PAL doesn't really make that much diffeent, most DVD players cna handle both, and most newish TV's and VCR's can play NTSC or PAL formats.

 

[Andrew Bichard]

Thanks Goofyish for your descriptions of encoding zones and getting around them.

I believe that the chip I have fitted, has converted my player to encoding zone 0, so that it currently plays DVDs from anywhere in the world. What it doesn't do yet, is circumvent RCE.

My first question then is ' Does Disney now use RCE on its Treasures series?'

My second is, how do I do a hack around RCE?

pt415999, thank you for your useful link, which I have saved for useful reference. It seems that I could have hacked my player from the remote, without buying a chip. The web site however doesn't mention RCE hacks (or at least - I couldn't find one!).

I hope Disney hasn't used DCE on these DVDs. I can sympathise with the need to control release dates of new movies still showing in cinemas, but the DVDs I am interested in are apparently not available outside of zone 1 and possibly never will be.

Andrew

 

[Goofyish]

Andrew - not sure if the Disney DVD's have RCE or not - it may tell you on some of the DVD sites, take a look at:

http://www.playserver2.com/play247.asp?

http://www.futureent.com/

http://www3.cd-wow.com/

There is also a good forum for all things DVD:

http://www.avforums.com/

I'm not sure, but I think RCE blocks DVD's on players that are set to 'region free' - or region 0. If you can, change the region to region 1.