Help with DVD | Imamother

ChossidMom

Mon, Dec 06 2010, 1:42 pm

I recently ordered a few exercise videos from ebay. They were delivered to a U.S. address where I picked them up myself last week.
I brought them home to Israel and when I tried to play them I was informed that my DVD has the WRONG REGION CODE and that I should either insert a disc with the right one (yeah, right) or change the region code on my DVD player. I tried to do that but then it informed me that I can only change the region code five times!!!!!

What to do???

bluebird

Mon, Dec 06 2010, 7:39 pm

(edit: I totally missed the exercise part! Sorry, of course you want to watch the DVDs frequently).

Frustrating, isn't it? This is not my area of expertise but maybe I can point you in the right direction. I'm assuming that your DVDs are region 1 (US, Canada) and that your laptop is region 2 (Middle East and some other areas).

1. If you have an older DVD drive, you might be able to find a code on the internet to make it region-free. Based on what you wrote, though, this is likely not possible.

2. If you have a TV or monitor that you can hook a DVD player up to, maybe find a cheap region 1 DVD player just to play the US DVDs.

3. Also for use with a TV or some monitors, you can try to buy a DVD player that's been modified to be region free.

4. If you don't mind a small screen, you might be able to find a cheap portable region 1 DVD player to play the DVDs on.

5. You can buy a USB DVD drive for your computer and set it to region 1. Use that to watch these DVDs and the built-in one to watch your region 2 DVDs.

6. Use a software program like AnyDVD (http://www.slysoft.com/en/tutorials.html) to bypass the region and "rip" the DVD to your computer. I do not quite understand the legal status of this method (especially in Israel), but as long as you're not making copies and selling it you're probably ethically OK.

7. (This likely won't work unless you can borrow long-term) Depending on how frequently you plan to watch them, ask around. There are probably more than a few olim that brought DVDs, DVD players, and computers from the US or Canada that would be willing to let you borrow them so you could watch your DVDs.

8. This may sound ridiculous, but maybe you could find an old, cheap laptop or desktop computer that can play region 1 DVDs or that you can switch to region 1.