nathanhaigh

Are there a set of DVD test discs that can be used for testing if a player will actually play discs of a particular region(s)? e.g. a disc with little content but encoded as region 1 (ditto for the othert regions). Ideally, i'd like to be able to download images and burn the discs myself if this is possible!

I have a region 2 Aiwa DVD player (HT-DV1) and i've been looking for a code to make it region free, and tried a few from similar models but no apparent luck. However, my sister-in-law got me a DVD from Australia (region 4) and it seems work fine! So i'd like to use a "test set" of DVDs to see if it will play other regions.

I saw this web page from JVC showing pretty much what i wanted and so i assumed this sort of test set would be available and would be very useful for many other people to use:
http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/...m/dvd-reg.html

Cheers
Nathan

Spiky

I don't think one disc can have more than one region. It is possible that your Australian disc is actually R0, though. Which should play in any player in the world. Just get a movie from every region that you care about. That ought to do it. As long as they aren't really R0 discs.

Josh Z

Many Australian discs are coded for R2 and R4 simultaneously because the distributors frequently issue the same disc with different packaging in the two regions.

nathanhaigh

I didn't think a DVD could be encoded as more than one region? I was looking for a cheap alternative to buying a DVD from each region - any ideas?

Nathan

Spiky

I'm not too knowledgeable about this, but I think you can burn DVDs with different regions. You could make one of each for basically nothing. I wouldn't think fancy test discs would be any cheaper than simply buying some movies from elsewhere. Make them ones you would buy anyway, of course. Whenever I need to test a player, I just pull out one of my R2 discs (I'm in R1).

nathanhaigh

So you don't know if there is a way to burn your own DVD with a region code? I thought someting like this might have been possible - or is the ability to encode regions only available to DVD manufacturues?

Thanks for your input
Nathan

Spiky

Haven't done much computer burning. I think you can change the encoding in most burning software, but not sure. I know there are some much more knowledgeable folks around here, like Freak, maybe they'll chime in.

chente

When I went region-free, I borrowed a few Japanese R2's from a co-worker of mine to test them out. Maybe some of your friends have dvd's from other regions you can borrow to test out. Another alternative is to use Nicheflix A La Carte rental system to rent a few dvds from other regions to try out.

X

There might be some freeware/shareware or some professional software that lets you specify region, but I tried Sonic MyDVD, Pinnacle Studio and Ulead VideoStudio and none offered me a region choice.PAL or NTSC was the only choice I could find. I assume they're all regionless.

nathanhaigh

Anyone got any idea if there might be software that allows you to check what region(s) a DVD is?

In the mean time i'll try and see if any friends have other region DVDs

Nathan

X

Software players such as PowerDVD will tell you the region.

chemosh6969

Sometimes I make dvds from movies I get from archive.org

If I need to make a copy for a friend, or for me, or whatever, I use dvd shrink to copy it and when you go to copy it, there is an option for having it come out a certain region.

You could go to archive.org and find a small video and make your own.

TheKing

DVDInfo Pro will tell you the regions, as will DVD Decrypter. Decrypter will also tell you if the disc has RCE.

nathanhaigh

Thanks everyone, I had installed DVD decrypter as part of my initial foray into DVD computer software. When inserting the said DVD (Kath & Kim Series 1,2 and 3 Disc set) it reported it as Region 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 with no RCE protection.

Does this mean that there are 6 different "tracks" each with a different region encoding, or is the region encoding seperate to the actual video stream? I also assume that this means all these regions are encoded on the DVD and it is not actually region 0?

Cheers

Nathan

nathanhaigh

FYI

I capture a 1 sec video with my webcam (just a black screen), wrote a DVD using Nero, Copied this using DVD shrink, and re-encoded it as as region 1 DVD, and another as a region 4 DVD. Therefore, i now have a test set of 3 DVDs, one which is region free, one regin 1 and one region 4!

I also found a bug in DVD Decryptor, which miss reported these 2 region DVDs as region 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 encoded whereas dvd shrink and power dvd reported them correctly!

However, my Aiwa HT-DV1 DVD player is still not region free and locked as region 2! Any hints on how to find out a hack code for this machine? Is it a case of trial and error or is there a more systematic/targetted approach to find a region free hack code?

Thanks for all your help and input!!
Nathan

chemosh6969

There is no such thing as region 0. Instead it is just all the region codes being selected.

dleedlee

One mentioned here:
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.ph...ct=Aiwa+HT-DV1