I wish to play a European DVD on my standalone (Sony DVP NS501P progressive)) DVD player and I got the message "Playback prohibited by area limitations" It is sad because it is a legit DVD purchased during a European vacation.
The DVD plays well in the PC (Intervideo WinDVD, Windows Media Player etc), I was able to make a copy with DVD decrypter and DVD Shrink which also plays well in the PC but not in the standalone. The Sony works well otherwise in every respect.
Your dvd is in the PAL format and needs to converted to NTSC to play on your stand alone. I've done this a couple of times with Nero Vision Express, quality is so so
I converted PAL to NTSC using IFOEdit, it also lists the DVD as "Region Free", so did DVD Decrypter. Still the standalone DVD player refuses to play "due to region limitations". The disc lists as Region 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and Free, but the player obviously want a Region 1 confirmation. How can I change the Region to a definite "1" ?
your player doesnt like the region apparantly. you could try Regionfreeing the player itself. VideoHelp.com has a vast list of standalone DVD player regioncode hacks / codes , try checking that out.
On a side note : some standalone dvd players will refuse to play all region (region 0 ) DVDs , especially North American Region 1 DVD players. These ones are also usually a PITA to remove the regioncode from or impossible to regionfree. Sony is notorious for this with their players.
as for setting the region on the dvd, you'd have to rerip it with CloneDVD, DVDDecrypter, DVDShrink etc and manually set the set the region when you rip so the code is set in the IFOs ( I think thats where's region code info is kept) and than reburn the disc.
you cant change a retial/pressed dvd's region on the dvd itself Im afraid. Only can hack your player's regioncode IF your player can be hacked/region freed.
I understand the difference between the DVD player restrictions and the disc's region code. I ripped the disc with DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink, used IFOEdit but could not find the way to install the Code 1 into the ripped disc. All those programs can make the ripped disc "Region Free" but this is not enough for my Sony, it wants a confirmation of Region 1.
The idea is not to hack my player (the disc will not play probably on other players) but make the ripped disc playable on all Region 1 players. So I need to change the Region code on the ripped disc itself.
Open DVD Shrink, read the disc you want to copy, click backup, click DVD region, uncheck Region free, check region 1. This should now only be a region 1 backup. Let me know if this works.
No, Ppower, is does not work. This was one of the first thing I tried.
To show how stubborn I am, I tried: Ripped the original 2 hour (opera) DVD with DVDDecrypter, changed ALL IFO files from PAL to NTSC with IFOEdit using the patch method, burned a disc with DVDDecrypter, didn't play. Then ripped this modified disc with a commercial program (Super DVD Ripper) to mpeg. Unfortunately, it separated into 3 files. Combined the 3 files into one with my video editor (Ulead VideoStudio 7) and converted to video (in VIDEO_TS file) by same. Since the finished recording was almost 7 GB, I used DVDShrink to compress. Burned with DVDDecrypter. The idea was that my DVD player played well all of my own camcorder recordings (mpegs converted to video). But it still did not play by my DVD player (region). It seems whatever I do, the original region designation copies through.
So what is the code and where is in the files? How can it be successfully modified? Apparently DVDShrink is not successful either.
