Region playback

[hevanne]

I understand this is a question that has been asked many times but I have searched through the forums and none of the fixes work.

I live in a Region2 area so when I try to play a Region 1 disc WMP obviously wont play it but VLC Plays it with pixelated / choppy playback and audio. The the static Menus are fine though. I have tried deleting %appdata%\vlc as that was mentioned on one post but still no smooth playback.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[dumbo4711]

i think the best way is to rip the dvd to harddisk (for e.g. with dvd fab; this will remove the region settings)
then u can play it from there or burn it on a dvd-r

[hevanne]

Thansks for the reply. Is there any free software I could use to do that?

Also if anyone has a way of playing the origional discs I would be still interested.

[dumbo4711]

dvd decrypter and dvd shrink can do the job but are bit older
and may have problems with new dvds (depending on copy protection)

here is a list of tools (incl. freeware) that can rip a dvd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_ripper



edit:
there is another option but i am not sure if it will help with vlc
with a firmeware update you could make your dvd drive region free
but i DO NOT recommend this if u use vista or w7
because the dvd decoder from ms will stop working properly if it detects a region free drive
means wmp will no longer play any dvd at all