Setting Region of DVD Drive

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Introduction

In some situations, the DVD drive may refuse to play DVDs because the region set in drive does not match the region set on the DVD. This also can affect the ripping of DVD disks on this drive.

If your drive is not old, you can be sure it is an RPC-2 drive, which means 2 things:

  • You can change the region code only 5 times.
  • You will probably not be able to rip the DVD content to hard disk when the region code of the player does not match the region code of the DVD disc.

The DVD data may be accessible to brute force decryption attacks, even with an RPC-2 DVD drive, but this may not always work.

The best approach is to reflash the drive to make it RPC-1, which allows the data to be read easily and then decrypted successfully. Choose a drive which has firmware available to it using the information at RPC1.org web site, see the Links section which points to sites such as The Dangerous Brothers.

More details about RPC1 is here at RPC1.org.

Verification of currently set DVD region

To verify the settings of your DVD drive, you should use the dvd_region tool: by default it tries to open the drive /dev/dvd but in recent LinuxMCE installations, the different numbering schema is used, e.g. /dev/dvd1 , /dev/dvd2 , etc. Use the "-d" option to change the drive to query: 

root@dcerouter:~# /usr/pluto/bin/dvd_region -d /dev/dvd1


If the region ID is set, you should see the similar output: 

Drive region info:
Type: Drive region is set
4 vendor resets available
4 user controlled changes available
Region: 1 playable
RPC Scheme: The Logical Unit _shall_ adhere to the specification and all requirements of the CSS license agreement concerning RPC

Setting DVD region

Please do NOT do this unless you understand that you are using up the 5 region code changes in your DVD drive, which can result in a drive permanently set to the wrong region code!

If you see the message about not set region ID, you can set it using combination of options "-s" and "-r", for example, to set region to 1 (which corresponds to the US and Canada), you should run: 

root@dcerouter:~# /usr/pluto/bin/dvd_region -s -r 1 -d /dev/dvd1

And press enter when you will be asked if you really want to set DVD region.

Extra information

There is an article in Wikipedia on DVD region code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code Also see the rpc1.org FAQ.

See also 

   * RPC1.org for info about firmware to make your drive RPC1
   * DVD Infomatrix (a wealth of information about DVD PCs)
   * MPEGX (PC utilities for video and audio, more)
   * DVDSoft.net (PC utilities, more)
   * Doom9 (PC utilities for DVD backup)
   * Visual Domain <PC utilities, including Drive Info)
   * DVDCity (code-free DVD player FAQ)
   * Code Free DVD (region-free DVD players)
   * Code Free DVD Mart (region-free DVD players and information)
   * Region Free DVD (region workarounds for players and PCs)
   * RegionFreeDVDPlayers (region-free DVD players)
   * ZoneFreeDVD (region-free DVD players)
   * dvdkits.com (modification chips for DVD players)
   * DVD Upgrades (region-free DVD players and modification chips)
   * DVDoverseas (region-free DVD players)
   * Link Electronics (region-free DVD players and upgrades)
   * Techtronics (region-free DVD players and upgrades)
   * Upgrade Heaven (region-free DVD players)
   * Eric's DVD Information (tech info on early players)
   * Google Deja Usenet Archive (search the rec.video.dvd and alt.video.dvd newsgroups)

The above info is borrowed from DVD demystified

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