[Will Hunt]

The DVD shop on Koh Tao, Thailand sells DVDs at wonderfully low prices. However they all seem to be region 9.

The DVD player downstairs works fine but if I dont want to disturb dearest mum and dad then Ill have to play them upstairs on my computer.

What free software can I use to play the DVDs?

[Monolith]

I'm sure if you just come clean and tell your parents you're into watching Ladyboy DVD's you'll be fine. Eventually they'll probably be comfortable with Thailand's finest prancing around on their living room TV.

[SA Chris]

Most DVDs are only differentiated regionally by a code.

Try putting the make and model of your DVD player and the word "hack" into Google and see what comes up.

Did this on ours and all that was required was opening the disc drawer, entering a 6 digit code and then closing it. Can now play US DVDs no bother, but not tried any "Asian" ones.

However, if you don't want to "disturb" them with the contents of the DVD, I have never heard of any reginoionally restricted DVDs not working on any PC that plays DVD

[Paul B]

There's a program called "DVD 4 3" that removes lots of region coding and things, it just runs in the background then does its thing when you put a dvd in.

[Bubba]

http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-region-free.htm does the same sort of thing.

You can probably patch the firmware on your dvd drive but you need to get this right, as the last time i did it you only had a few tries before the drive got locked down completely.

Google for your brand/model of DVD drive along with firmware and region and you should find out how easy your particular drive is to patch.

[Will Hunt]

I'm sure if you just come clean and tell your parents you're into watching Ladyboy DVD's you'll be fine. Eventually they'll probably be comfortable with Thailand's finest prancing around on their living room TV.

The terrible truth outs.

[GCW]

I might use CSS and region free as Bubbs suggested 
Very good at what it does.

[Jim]

or you could rip it with dvd decoder or similar and then reburn without any region coding or just play from hard drive