Playback Prohibited Due To Area Limitations

[kamal007]

Well i just got back from my trip to India about 2 weeks ago and i brought back with me a dvd of my cousins wedding...the problem is when i put it in my dvd player the message comes up which states "playback prohibited due to area limitations"...this is probably because they use different format there but does anyone know any software which i can use to convert it so it will work here?...i was hoping for a software that i can just download because its not like im gonna do this often...can someone please help..

Thanks

[deviantintegral]

Was this DVD made professionally? I've never heard of home-burned discs having region encoding. For more info, see wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd_region

VLC (http://www.videolan.org/) can play DVD's for different regions without requiring any hardware changes.

[Jucius Maximus]

Sounds almost like the disc was authored with another region code. If whoever authored it didn't set up their software properly, it might not be region free. (Home produced discs can have region codes if you set it up in the authoring software.) I would try playing it back on the computer by using software like VLC, which can often handle other regions even if your computer hardware is region locked.

Also, India uses the PAL video system so I hope your are using a PAL/NTSC converting DVD player.

[Jon Lai]

Also, India uses the PAL video system so I hope your are using a PAL/NTSC converting DVD player.

...or a PAL TV.

Alternatively, stick it into your computer, extract it into a MPEG file, convert it to NTSC, reauthor the MPEG, and burn it back on DVD.

I've yet to see a Multiformat DVD player that will support both PAL and NTSC playback in Canada.

[kamal007]

It was professionally made but i dont know why it dosent work...it does work on the computer but i need it to work on my dvd player...i used some program which said it converts PAL to NTSC but it still dosent work...i thought it would work after i converted it but it still didnt work...

[TapemanPL]

its probably locked to a region so people can't buy a movie that isn't released in their country and watch it. north america is region 1, and asia is something like 4, so you can't watch it on dvd players bought here, unless you unlock your dvd player to be region free, its actually pretty easy most of the time. just search on the net for region free codes for your dvd player, you will usually only need to press a combination of buttons to get to the region menu where then you can change to what ever region you want in this case region free to be able to watch movies from anywhere

i got mine from www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.php

hope this helps

[Octavius]

Solution is quite simple:

1) Insert India DVD into DVD Burner
2) Change Region on DVD Burner via Control Panel
3) Open DVD Shrink and Select "Backup" and ensure "region free" is selected
4) Before burning new disc (and after backup is complete), change region back to 1
5) Burn files off the HDD that DVD Shrink backed up off the DVD
6) Enjoy your film on any DVD Player in your home.

[JAC]

Short way:

1. Rip it with DVDFab Decrypter:

2. Use IfoEdit to change it from PAL to NTSC.

3. Burn it.

[Jon Lai]

Solution is quite simple:

1) Insert India DVD into DVD Burner
2) Change Region on DVD Burner via Control Panel
3) Open DVD Shrink and Select "Backup" and ensure "region free" is selected
4) Before burning new disc (and after backup is complete), change region back to 1
5) Burn files off the HDD that DVD Shrink backed up off the DVD
6) Enjoy your film on any DVD Player in your home.

+1

I don't see why you don't already have a region-free DVD Player though. Just pick up one of those $20 players from Wal-Mart, they're region-free.

[number84]

Solution is quite simple:

1) Insert India DVD into DVD Burner
2) Change Region on DVD Burner via Control Panel
3) Open DVD Shrink and Select "Backup" and ensure "region free" is selected
4) Before burning new disc (and after backup is complete), change region back to 1
5) Burn files off the HDD that DVD Shrink backed up off the DVD
6) Enjoy your film on any DVD Player in your home.

keep in mind that you may only change the region code a specific number of times on your DVD burner...but i'm sure there are ways around this too.

[toujours]

Try vlc media player from videolan.org before you start playing around with region settings on your DVD drive.

libdvdcss is a free, highly portable library for accessing and unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the CSS system. It is part of the VideoLAN project and is used by VLC and all other free/open source DVD players such as Ogle, xine-based players and MPlayer.

libdvdcss is designed to be platform independent, with versions for GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, BSD and Solaris. It is released under the GNU GPL.

libdvdcss is not to be confused with DeCSS. While DeCSS uses a cracked DVD player key to perform authentication, libdvdcss uses a generated list of possible player keys. If none of them work (for instance, when the DVD drive enforces region coding) a brute force algorithm is tried so the region code of a DVD is ignored. Unlike DeCSS, libdvdcss has never been fought over in a courtroom.

[Octavius]

keep in mind that you may only change the region code a specific number of times on your DVD burner...but i'm sure there are ways around this too.

Worst case scenario, you're permanently stuck on region 1. If it's really that troubling for you, a new DVD Burner is like 30 bucks nowadays.

Besides, this would only matter if you're doing it a lot. If the OP just has 1 DVD or a stack of DVDs from one region, he can do them all at once and never have to change the region on his DVD player every again.

[fooit]

There are utils for almost all CD/DVD players/burners that will reset the count number of region code changes, so Google it and have no worries.

[computer01]

I've yet to see a Multiformat DVD player that will support both PAL and NTSC playback in Canada.

Mine does, and many others do also. Mine is the LG LDA-531.

Many regular standalone DVD players are region code and macrovision "hackable" also. Hacking them usually involves just pressing a few buttons on the remote. After doing so, my player was completely region-free and macrovision was disabled.

Go to http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks and punch your DVD player's model number into the search engine. It may not support unlocking, but if it does, it sure beats ripping and re-encoding the video.

[rabbit]

I've yet to see a Multiformat DVD player that will support both PAL and NTSC playback in Canada.

My first player, bought back in 2001 at Costco, could play both NTSC and PAL. A hacked firmware update allowed me to change regions. Of course, it couldn't convert anamorphic PAL to 4:3 NTSC properly (aspect ratio problems), but I haven't heard of that problem with players from the last few years.



To the original dude, pop the disc in the computer, get/run DVD Decrypter, and it will tell you what region(s) the disc is. Once you find that out, you can go from there.