Help How can I play a western region DVD on my computer

[clive]

Really pleased that I have had a special DVD arrive from America only to find that it\'s western region and won\'t play on our DVD player or the computer,

Can anyone guide me off to a safe download that will give our computer the capability of playing a western region DVD, help :o

[Brett]

Try downloading xing or a media converter

[kevint]

Or AnyDVD, you can try free for 21 days

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

Kevin

[clive]

Hi

Thanks for the links but cannot work out exactly what I need to do so I can view the DVD.  Does anyone have any other links that I can try?

To recap I have a DVD made in the US (Western region) but I cannot view it so I need to decode it to view on my computer or TV

[kevint]

Hi Clive,

AnyDVD will remove the copy and region protection, you then need to use software such as Handbrake http://handbrake.fr/ to copy (Rip) the DVD to your PC\'s hard drive in a format which can then be played from the hard drive.  Ripping the DVD can take a long time depending on your PC.  There is a tutorial here:

http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/WindowsGuiGuide

An alternative might be to find a region hack for your DVD player:

http://www.dvdhacks.co.uk/

Hope that helps

Kevin

[Rotary_Menace]

VLC player in my experience will play anything,

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[clive]

Many Thanks Guys but we actually gave up downloading things to try and make it work, we just couldn\'t get the progams to see the downloaded disc.

I eventually found it would play on our lap top then connected it into our main TV to play it,

[captainbizzaro]

I\'ve got a feeling Clive, the only problem with running it on your laptop direct instead of using a 3rd party software is that it only gives you so many plays and then sets it\'s region coding to that disc so you\'ll be screwed for playing English discs. I may be wrong but I remember getting a warning message along those lines on Windows XP back a few years ago. Don\'t know about Vista and 7 though as have been Mac\'ed up for a while now.

[ashc]

use dvddecrypter to rip it to the hard drive, as iso format (one file) then use vlc (videolan) to play the files. both free.
then any dvd burning prog to burn the iso back to a blank dvd. If it is too big (8.4gig commercial rather than 4.5gb writable dvd) then use dvdshrink to resize it. also free.

[dthebuk]

another vote for VLC. It plays everything

[Lisa]

Thanks Guys I will have another go :Thumbs-up

(whoops Lisa\'s logged in)