Season 1 DVD not viewable in Australia?

[Roxanne]

Could someone please help me. When I tried to preorder the season 1 DVD it linked to Amazon and there was a message about 6 zones where DVDs are playable. It said season 1 may not be viewable in Australia. Any advice please. I have never purchased a DVD before. Any Australians out there? Many thanks.

 

[muppet_dk]

Could someone please help me. When I tried to preorder the season 1 DVD it linked to Amazon and there was a message about 6 zones where DVDs are playable. It said season 1 may not be viewable in Australia. Any advice please. I have never purchased a DVD before. Any Australians out there? Many thanks.

You need to check if your player can play Region 1 dvd's. You can check your manual, sometimes it tells if your player are region free, search the net for information on your player or buy a cheap region 1 DVD from the US.
If you discover that your player can't handle the region 1 dvd's then you could see if a hack is avaible for your player, theres alot of sites on the net that has information about this. heres one of the sites http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.php.

 

[Roxanne]

Thanks for your quick response. The only DVD player I have is my HP media centre computer!

 

[Muppetsdownunder]

Thanks for your quick response. The only DVD player I have is my HP media centre computer!

The region coding problem is a thing of the past especially when viewing them on a computer. DVD rom drives that are in computers such as a media centre computer would probably have region coding which means if you play a region 4 DVD (Australian) it will give you about 5 times before it locks into that region and only region 4 DVDS can be played. Theres software available that prevents the region locks from being activated aswell as something which is called a firmware upgrade which updates the software stored inside a chip in the dvd rom that tells it that it can play any DVD. Theres software available that allows any DVD to be played on any computer regardless whether its region locked or not. You could also have 2 DVD drives (they are so cheap now - under $40AUD) one for region 4 Australian and 1 for region 1 US discs. Some software I can recommend to prevent region coding is DVD Idle www.dvdidle.com.

Hope I were of some help to you, Like to help a fellow Australian. Hope I didnt confuse you. Email me if you want more info.

 

[muppet_dk]

Thanks for your quick response. The only DVD player I have is my HP media centre computer!

You can also use 3rd party firmware to make your drive region free.
However theres a very small risk that you will destrory the drive, and then the warrenty won't cover it. Personally I've installed firmware on quite alot of drives and never brokken one yet or heard any of my friends doing it yet.

You can find more about firmware here http://www.cdrinfo.com/forum/ & http://www.cdfreaks.com/drive/

 

[Roxanne]

thank you both very much. Yes, it is getting a little technical for me, but tomorrow I'll try and make more sense of your advice, with a clearer head.

 

[Muppetsdownunder]

I'd recommend a software solution rather than tinkering with firmware unless you know what you are doing. I have learnt about alot of this stuff because I stuffed my CD/rw/DVD combo drive once when trying to update the firmware, I stopped it whilst it was updating and the drive wouldnt even power up after that. Luckily I found a solution and managed to fix the drive. If you update the firmware be very very careful. All it takes is the computer to crash or shutdown or the power to go off whilst its updating and its basically wrecked, I was just lucky. It can also ruin your DVD drive if you update to the wrong model number etc.

 

[Muppetto]

I recommend the free DVD viewing software VLC. It's available for 19 different operating systems and plays my Region 2 DVDs from England without a hitch. It's a simple install, too!

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

 

[That Announcer]

Are there any viruses associated with VLC? If not, I might have to get it. I spent $60 on a Tintin boxset from England, only to discover the region hack on my player doesn't work. Oh well.