Don’t know which forum it belongs to but I’m wondering if anyone has any experience with AnyDVD on the VAIO TR’s?  I’ve got DVD’s from different regions and would like to be able to watch it with my VAIO.  The only problem is that I don’t have any spare cash (now) to buy any new software and am looking at the freeware sector.

Could anybody help?

:D ok. i went through exact trouble. Here is the link…go download “DVD Region-Free enables “

http://www.dvdidle.com/index.htm

Have Fun with TR.

For the TR2B I have, I had to set a region for the DVDs and there were 4 times I could change the code only. This may or may not be different from the other TRs outside Japan, but my bet is it should be the same. 

You may also want to take note that DVDs from region 1 tend to be sharper than the ones from other regions. This observation comes from many Audio/Video magazines. Probably because they are made in the US?

And perhaps you are asking if there are any softwares that support DVDs from different regions? I think this goes back to my first paragraph…. depends on drive settings…

Well I haven’t put AnyDVD on my laptop yet but it works perfectly on my region locked Pioneer DVR-106 on my desktop. It’s a very good program, just fire it up and forget about it.

I have also tried DVD Idle and at the time it didn’t work with CloneDVD (Though it states it does now) but for watching DVD’s it worked just fine. It has a bonus that it will cache the movie into RAM or onto the HDD so the DVD drive can spin down. So say on a 8x DVD drive 1/8th of the way through the movie the DVD drive can spin down and won’t be needed again. This should in increase battery life so I’m planning on giving that one a shot again. I’m surprised no one else here uses it seeing as their must be a few that watch movies on their laptops. Other thing that the new version does it caches Divx, AVI’s etc as well so they also will let the drive spin down.

You may also want to use WinDVD 5 Platinum. It has a feature that’s essentially the same as DVDIdle.

It’s called Mobile Power Optimizations. It can “aggressively” use unused memory to cache the video so that the DVD drive can stop spinning. It works very well.

windows media player is free and plays dvd’s

Actually, by default, Windows Media Player 9 does not play DVDs and does not come with a decoder. Some systems ship a third party decoder already installed. If you install any DVD player software (like WinDVD 4 or 5 like in TR systems) then Windows Media Player 9 automatically uses that codec.

According to Microsoft’s site:

Building your own PC? Announcing the DVD Decoder Pack(s) for Windows XP.
If you are a custom PC builder or do not have a PC with a preinstalled DVD decoder, you can enable DVD playback in Windows Media Player for Windows XP on your PC with a low-cost, third-party DVD Decoder Pack for Windows XP. You have the choice of your DVD decoder manufacturer and solution.

Of course, this is a moot point…the original poster just wants a method to play other region encoded DVDs on his TR without hassle. AnyDVD will do the trick and work with most DVD programs.  :D

Thanks for the replies.

Gr00vy0ne:  so I assume this mean that AnyDVD would trick both the hardware and the WinDVD 4 into thinking that I’m using a region free DVD and would not ask me to change the region setting?

According to the AnyDVD software:

-Works with all DVD-drives, no matter what region code it has
-Works with every DVD copying and player software (e.g. CloneDVD)

http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html

Hi Groovy,

Didn’t know that about WinDVD. Will have to check that out. I think I’ve got a few of them from various systems and bundles, just never installed it.

Yeah AnyDVD you just load up and forget about it, it just does it’s stuff in the background.

Just thought you might like to know, I’ve just tried AnyDVD on my TR3SP and it does NOT work at all. It puts up an error message saying that a few DVD drives block any access to reading the scrambled region area if the disc is from the wrong region so it cannot work.

The drive in my TR is Matshita UJ-812. It’ll only work if there is a RPC 1 firmware which there isn’t, not yet anyways.

Bit of a shame but ah well.

How about any freeware that let you do the job?  AnyDVD isn’t free.

Well the only 2 programs that I know that can make a drive region free without modifying the firmware on the drive is AnyDVD and DVD Region Free (And DVD Idle Pro which is just DVD Idle and DVD Region Free bundled together in one app)

Neither of these are free and neither of them will work because they both work the same way. With the firmware blocking access to the region encoded part of the DVD the only solution will be a hacked firmware. I’m sure I read of someone patching his firmware on one of the TR’s drives but I cannot remember which one. It was on this forum though.

My drive is the DVD-RW, there is no RPC1 firmware for that yet, if there ever will be.

FastLaneJB:  your posts confused me.  Do you mean either of those will work or neither?  Either way, there is no cheap solution for me.  :(

Just noted on the DVD Idle site the following comment….

>>NOTE: DVD-RAM, Matshita XX-8xxx, SW-9xxx series DVD drives, and >>Torisan DRD-Uxxx series DVD drives are not supported now, and >>there is no plan to support them.

Previous post said that the TR has a Matshita drive so looks like it won’t play. Shame as I was planning to buy a TR3 for work/play on trips between US and UK.

Has anyone found software that does work on the TR3 to stop the region swapping (or even unlock it so you get the 4 switches again).

thanks
AR