I moved to Thailand a few weeks ago with a new Sony Vaio E-Series laptop. Brought some DVD's from the States with me as well. After time like many of us here, I eventually decided to buy a few DVD's at one of those shops (Boomerang I think was the name) in the mall we all see here. The first movie I watched everything was OK, but when I loaded the next DVD from the shop a warning came up from my laptop saying I need to change the Region code (Region 1) and that I can only make a Region change 3 more times.

Well I'm also smack in the middle of the Breaking Bad series season 2,(addicted to this show for sure!) so I needed to select the Region change back to Region 3 to continue to watch this. Watched another "local" DVD with my girlfriend last night, so long story short I'm down to my last change before according to the pop-up warning my laptop will lock my DVD player into the last Region code I used. Funny thing is, it appears both America & Thailand use Region 3 for original DVD's. But I guess when they "re-burn" SOME of these DVD's to include Thai language and subtitles....the Region code for some changes.

Is there a work around for this? My laptop is my only source at this time to watch movies. Obviously I would prefer to have my laptops DVD player continue to be able to play DVD's from the States as I want to watch the rest of the Breaking Bad series, not to mention my family will be sending me some movies from time to time.

However I enjoy being able to get some local DVD's here that have Thai subtitles to watch with my girlfriend. I'm on a fairly limited budget so any help would be appreciated. Do they make an external DVD player that can plug into my laptops USB port? If so...would that work? Are they expensive?

Thanks in advance,

Brian

Sorry, forgot to include that I have been using the pre-installed Cyberlink DVD Player software, but when I tried using Windows Media Player the same pop-up warning appeared.

Simply download Gom player. it plays everything I have thrown at it and is user friendly to use. Never use anything else since. The link is here

http://player.gomlab.com/eng/download/

It doesn't matter what media player you use - the DVD drive will still lock into a region after 5 changes of region. External USB DVD players are widely available.

http://www.dvdidle.c...region-free.htm

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

It doesn't matter what media player you use - the DVD drive will still lock into a region after 5 changes of region. External USB DVD players are widely available.

So you are saying that even if I take ThailandBert's suggestion and download another player, in this case Gom...that I will still be hosed and my only option is an external DVD player?

If I am to purchase an external DVD player, will it be able to play multiple regions? Or only those regioned to Thailand?

http://www.dvdidle.c...region-free.htm

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

Thank you Tywais....dvdidle.com looks promising. Do you have any specific experience with either of these?

http://www.dvdidle.c...region-free.htm

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

Cheers Tywais. Forgot about them and the first one is free. Looks as though they won't work on Matshita drives - always a problem.

http://www.dvdidle.c...region-free.htm

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

Thank you Tywais....dvdidle.com looks promising. Do you have any specific experience with either of these?

That's the only way to go if you don't want to buy a new dvd player, find a software that will unlock your dvd drive region lock or reset it.

Region-free firmware for drives and related information here:

http://www.rpc1.org

It is long time since used a DVD but I recall the players had a setting for Region all.

VLC ignores region coding.

I have used Anydvd and it works great, you can always download or stream the shows as well and save some cash.

I have used Anydvd and it works great, you can always download or stream the shows as well and save some cash.

This is true, and I really wish I could BUT it requires a routed VPN and that whole ball of wax is something I'm not familiar with as of yet. I looked into it before after reading a post on here about it but it seemed complex and confusing.

just use (buy) an external usb dvd player, load the software that comes with the player,works like a champ

I'm in a similar situation with my PS3. Brought it with me from the states, along with a few hundred region one DVDs. Now what? Buy a second player just to read local media? I guess that's my only option. Whatever I end up getting has to be network addressable since all of my media is on a NAS.

VLC ignores region coding.

Try with VLC first. It's free (or if you are happy with the product, you can donate to the project).

VLC plays almost anything. Great for Windows and Linux.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html

You can even control your video player with an Android client

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.peterbaldwin.client.android.vlcremote

Try using DVD Ghost.

http://www.region-free-dvd.com/