DVD Burner / player
 

The deal is that I finally broke down and got a DVD from the U.K. of that wasn't released here after the first season. It is in Region2 / PAL format. Instead of buying a region free player, I had heard one could change the region on a computer drive (a couple of times, I believe). My plan is to buy a USB one and keep it set there as there are some other DVDs I have found that were released there and not here. Will that work with an USB external?

I was thinking about this one.

http://www.amazon.com/External-Styli.../ref=de_a_smtd

I presume I could still burn data DVDS on it that would be readable in the other drives, or am I wrong?

The region setting only affects playback of DVDs that use that setting.

There's also an "all regions" setting, but I'm not sure if you can actually select that or if it's locked out.

Thanks. It gets frustrating when things like copy protection, region encoding and the like stop people from doing things that are legal. If the material had been released here, I would have saved money buying here, but it is not. One series (Journeyman) I think can still be watched on Hulu, and somewhere I think I have each episode on DVD-R from where I recorded them on my DVR. But having an official DVD release is best. Another series besides those two I found in the meantime (the first I got was Fall Guy season 2 which is still not over here) and ordered with that first UK order NOW is being released here after not having been for around 2 years. I gave up and a couple of weeks later it is announced as being released here. LOL. I had even ordered two thinking I could sell one eventually. Oh, well. :)

It's been quite awhile (I think I was still living in Puerto Rico). I used to have two DVD burners in my tower, one set to region 1 and the other set to region 2.
The reason behind this was because I was buying DVD's in the UK and US. Because I would often take DVD's from one country to another and I would often want to watch them on TV rather than my PC. I used to use a ripping program called "DVDShrink" which I think is illegal in the US, during the ripping process you could make the newly burned copy region free.
Hope I am not crossing any lines here mentioning DVDShrink.

DVD Shrink - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, it violates the DMCA and some other countries' laws, but its existence is no secret.

On linux, region codes are generally bypassed in all media players that I'm aware of. That's because most linux distros use a reverse engineered version of libdvdcss, the weak dvd encryption code that enforces the region codes. Usually the libdvdcss package has to be downloaded from a separate, unofficial software repository because its distribution falls into a legal gray area in some countries. I haven't tried it myself, but I've been told that running linux in a virtual machine as a guest OS inside of windows will <b>not</b> get around the region problem.

All that being said, I've heard that some dvds have special Macrovision settings that will refuse to play a dvd on a dvd drive where no region setting has been made even on linux. However, once a region code has been set on the drive, it will play dvds from any region on linux.

Another thing I've heard but never confirmed myself is that the VLC media player also ignores region codes even on windows. It kind of makes sense since VLC probably uses the same reverse engineered libdvdcss code as most linix media players. It's probalby worth a try if you are having problems with your region codes.

Same with this product...
SlySoft - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
SlySoft Products | Backup Movie DVDs with AnyDVD and CloneDVD

They get away with it by being located in the West Indies.

I say so long as you are not out on your front lawn selling copies of IronMan 2 for 5 bucks each then you are not doing anything unethical. It's too bad if the consumer wants to back up what they paid for or to be able to play it hassle free.