Are we being held hostage to only watching DVD movies produced in America? I wore out a lot of shoe leather trying to find a DVD player that would let me watch a DVD movie given to my wife by a relative in Finland. In fact it was an award winning movie that had been viewed by hundreds at the University of Minnesota in a recent film festival. The movie was about the “Lotta,” a corps of women in the Finnish Army during their war against Russia, 1939-1944.
First, I bought a DVD player from a large electronics store. They had two players the sales person believed would work for this movie. I took it home, read the operator’s manual and found that it would only play DVD’s encoded for Region 1, which includes the United States. Having now read the manual, I discovered the Region 1 symbol was indeed printed on the outside of the box, but I hadn’t known what it meant before opening the box. Well, I learned something for all my spent shoe leather.
The symbol is a blue globe with a region number in the middle. There are about half a dozen regions through the world. DVD movies encoded for Europe are in Region 2. It means the player is limited to running movies for whatever region number is in the globe. Some DVD movies themselves have a globe symbol with the word ‘All’ in it. That disc will play in any player.
I called the store where I bought the player, but they said to try it anyway. “It might work in that player,” the man said. Nevertheless, after inserting my foreign disc, the display read, “Cannot play,” so I returned the player. The store clerk asked me to let her know if I find any player for Region 2, because she wanted to play some movies from Spain.
Just around the corner was a chain department store. The salesman there showed me one DVD player he was sure would work. And he said that often older players would work. But none of that advice has panned out. I already have an older player that wouldn’t do it, and the one he sent me home with gave me a “wrong region” display instead, so I returned it.
Next, I called another electronics store, and the manager was quite knowledgeable about the problem. He said hackers eventually get around these codes and post “how-to-do-its” on the web. A minor drawback is that it takes some time for the hackers to decode the newest DVD players, but a bigger problem is, if you succeed in breaking the code of your player, you also void its warrantee! I don’t know if I want to do that.
A drive on my computer will play DVD movies from other regions, but only for five times, and that’s it for good. It’s a real countdown. Insert the disc and a dialogue box pops up warning me I only have four or three more chances to make up my mind on what region’s DVD’s this drive can play. The fifth play sets the region indelibly into the firmware, and there’s no way to change it after that!
Editors note: If you know how or if folks can view foreign DVD movies email info@camdenews.org.