Removing the region code

[clueless1960]

Many of the Blu-rays that I would like are only available in the UK (region B). I live in the USA (region A).

If I was to purchase the region B Blu-rays, how affective is AnyDVD HD at removing the region coding, so that I can play the Blu-rays on my US Sony Blu-ray player?

 

[Jeff R 1]

Many of the Blu-rays that I would like are only available in the UK (region B). I live in the USA (region A).

If I was to purchase the region B Blu-rays, how affective is AnyDVD HD at removing the region coding, so that I can play the Blu-rays on my US Sony Blu-ray player?

Here are two threads about it where the industry has abused there own rules and AnyDVD HD has solved that problem.

https://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?63079-Country-code-locked-disc

https://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?63296-Remove-Blu-ray-country-code-option-in-settings.

I have a number of region "B" discs and at one time I would burn their content to a rewritable 50Gig Blu-ray with the region code removed, they would then play on my region "A" stand-alone player just fine.

I also found that 95% of the time it was the DVD that was region locked that was the problem, most, but not all Blu-rays are region free.
One that isn't is "City Of Ember" this was only released on Blu-ray in the UK and is definitely region "B".

You may have a new problem though, and that is Cinavia. Region "B" discs that contain Cinavia will be muted on a Cinavia enabled player even with the region code removed.
How old is your Blu-ray player, if it was manufactured before February 2012, it won't be Cinavia enabled, however check your brands support page and the on-line manual to be sure ?

Because of the drawn out process of burning and the Cinavia problem, I now just use a computer to play my Blu-rays.
This way I can just use AnyDVD HD on the fly or even just use a free Blu-ray player that doesn't detect regions, but you will have to live with Blu-ray menus.
Power DVD (as you may know) will play Blu-ray menus, and AnyDVD HD can take care of any Cinavia problems of course.

EDIT:


If you mouse over and right click on "Remove Blu-ray Region Code" it will give some important instructions.
Make sure and have this selection ticked when creating the ISO with region "B" Blu-rays.

 

[Ch3vr0n]

Why bring cinavia into this discussion, it has no relevance. The only other thing that is relevant is the video standard. Region B often uses PAL, while most do use NTSC there are discs where he main feature uses pal or had trailers using it. This can prevent playback on region A players, and no amount of region removal can fix that.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn Nexus 7 met Tapatalk

 

[Pete]

Why bring cinavia into this discussion, it has no relevance. The only other thing that is relevant is the video standard. Region B often uses PAL, while most do use NTSC there are discs where he main feature uses pal or had trailers using it. This can prevent playback on region A players, and no amount of region removal can fix that.

On Blu-rays this only applies to bonus content that was taken from the DVD version.
HD video is HD video - there is no PAL or NTSC involved.

Even if there is a PAL-trailer up front that would block playback - AnyDVD's Speedmenus would take care of that as well.

 

[Ch3vr0n]

True about the speedmenu, but if op wants to keep original menus and the disc has pal content up front that would not be an option.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn Nexus 7 met Tapatalk

 

[Jeff R 1]

Regardless of what was said here, I'm curious now. I know one of my region "B's" has a chocolate bar advertisement that would not show and a message was thrown up about restricted content. I know it was an advert for a chocolate bar because I did eventually figure a way around it.

@ Ch3vr0n
And I still think my point about Cinavia should be taken into consideration, unless you know something I don't and region "B" Blu-rays are not Cinavia enabled.
If the OP has been burning back-ups to disc I'm sure he knows about Cinavia anyways, but I thought I would just remind him.

It's a bit ironic too that the region "B" conundrum should come up, I'm expecting "The Secret of Kells" from the UK any day now...

 

[Ch3vr0n]

The reason cinavia has no place in topic is pretty simple.

1. This is not a protection topic of any kind, but about region removal
2. Cinavia doesn't care about what region the disc is from, it's not linked to the disc region one way or another.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn Nexus 7 met Tapatalk

 

[Jeff R 1]

The reason cinavia has no place in topic is pretty simple.

1. This is not a protection topic of any kind, but about region removal
2. Cinavia doesn't care about what region the disc is from, it's not linked to the disc region one way or another.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn Nexus 7 met Tapatalk

Yes I understand that, I just wanted to give the OP a "heads-up" to look for the Cinavia logo or how ever he wants to check into it, before he goes out and spends his money on region "B" Blu-rays.
It was just meant as a precaution and nothing else.

The OP could find a region "B" movie he likes, remove the region so it will play in his stand-alone player and 20 minutes into his movie experience the Cinavia warning
"POP-up".
Like I said it was just a precaution _ something to be aware of...

 

[Ch3vr0n]

'Before he spends his money on region B', that's like saying op should stick to region A discs because cinavia is only on region B bluray and not on A/C. Which is simply not true.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn Nexus 7 met Tapatalk

 

[Jeff R 1]

'Before he spends his money on region B', that's like saying op should stick to region A discs because cinavia is only on region B bluray and not on A/C. Which is simply not true.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn Nexus 7 met Tapatalk

Man... :doh:
You're reading way too much into this, all I'm saying is the OP should look for any Cinavia region "B" Blu-rays that he may come across that he may be interested in purchasing _ that's it. And he may want to avoid those Blu-rays.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

http://www.blu-ray.com/search/?quic...ch_keyword=Water+Diviner&section=bluraymovies

This was released only on Blu-ray in the UK, Australia and Italy _ it's a new release and could conceivably be Cinavia enabled, but from what I can tell so far, it isn't _ that's good news for the OP. (and upon checking it's a "Hopscotch Entertainment" released it in Australia, so it's vey unlikely it's Cinavia enabled)
Looks like a good movie though, I may bite on it.

But my point is that it's something to be aware of if his stand-alone player is also Cinavia enabled.

I'm here to help the OP, not argue with you weather or not Cinavia should be discussed here or not.

Ok....

Maybe you need to eat some chocolate or something or maybe too much coffee or not enough...
You seem to be on edge more so this morning then usual.

EDIT:

I'm not sorry I did mention Cinavia, Clueless1960 has only 16 posts in this forum and none of them talk about Cinavia, so finding out about it now before he spends his money is a good thing ???

 

[RBBrittain]

What Jeff is saying is: If you're using AnyDVD HD to enable playback of Region B-locked movies on a Region A player by copying to BD-R (as the OP wanted to do), you might run into Cinavia issues under certain circumstances because it's a copy; but you won't if you just play it on the PC. Region coding itself has nothing to do with Cinavia, but the OP's proposed solution to his region issue might because it involves copies and may involve a Cinavia-enabled movie and player. It's rare to run into that combination, but it can happen.

 

[DrinkLyeAndDie]

You both got the point across, Ch3vr0n & Jeff R 1. Leave it at that.

 

[clueless1960]

So how would I know if the Blu-ray has this "Cinavia"?

So how would I know if the Blu-ray has this "Cinavia"?

The Blu-ray disc set that I am interested in is The Persuaders (a British TV show from 1971/2).

I am also interested in the John Wayne Movie "Hellfighters" (which is available in Scandinavia).

 

[Ch3vr0n]

Simple, look for the purplish logo on the back. The logo itself says cinavia. That's the main giveaway next to the other main factor if it's a Sony distribution. They're pretty much the only users of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia



Neither that TV show nor that movie are Sony releases, so the chances of either of them having cinavia are very slim to nonexistent.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn Nexus 7 met Tapatalk

 

[moose]

View attachment 26656
If you mouse over and right click on "Remove Blu-ray Region Code" it will give some important instructions.
Make sure and have this selection ticked when creating the ISO with region "B" Blu-rays.

I find that anydvd doesn't always recognizes region locks. For example my Fantastic Mr. Fox Criterion disc is identified as Region Free and it's Region A locked (my bd player won't play it if the region is set to B). I just set region removal to manual and check the region I know the disc is from to avoid false detection.

 

[Ch3vr0n]

It's normal that anydvd doesn't always find the region. The bd region is coded on the disc, it's not easy to detect it. However you do well to do it manually, although you can also use the 'always ask' method. And naturally your region B player don't play the disc if the disc is locked to A

Verstuurd vanaf mijn Nexus 7 met Tapatalk

 

[moose]

It's normal that anydvd doesn't always find the region. The bd region is coded on the disc, it's not easy to detect it.

Yes, that's why I posted this comment. Jeff R 1's jpg instructs to set it to Auto, which may result in region not getting removed due to anydvd falsely identifying the disc as region free.

However you do well to do it manually, although you can also use the 'always ask' method. And naturally your region B player don't play the disc if the disc is locked to A

The "Always Ask" method is what I meant when I said "set region removal to manual". Just didn't remember how the option is called exactly

 

[Pete]

I find that anydvd doesn't always recognizes region locks. For example my Fantastic Mr. Fox Criterion disc is identified as Region Free and it's Region A locked (my bd player won't play it if the region is set to B). I just set region removal to manual and check the region I know the disc is from to avoid false detection.

Do you have an AnyDVD log of such a disc?
Actually, AnyDVD normally should only say "region free" if it is really, really certain, that the disc is region free. It may get the actual region wrong from time to time, but "region free" is only detected on non BD-J discs, where actual region free can be identified 100% (except for discs that hide their region coding in the menu).
It may be, that your disc tricks AnyDVD by using backup-registers. If that is so, AnyDVD will need an extension to check for those.

 

[moose]

Do you have an AnyDVD log of such a disc?
Actually, AnyDVD normally should only say "region free" if it is really, really certain, that the disc is region free. It may get the actual region wrong from time to time, but "region free" is only detected on non BD-J discs, where actual region free can be identified 100% (except for discs that hide their region coding in the menu).
It may be, that your disc tricks AnyDVD by using backup-registers. If that is so, AnyDVD will need an extension to check for those.

If I use "Always Ask" there's a popup with regions. On some discs I know for sure are region A locked (like Fantastic Mr Fox), Region Free is suggested on first scan. I did see discs that anydvd suggested are locked. I've concluded from that that it can't detect everything.

I don't know if I do a logfile of a disc that was already scanned before, and I've set to A it will still show Region Free. I think anydvd stores such info on discs it already processed before (maybe I'm wrong).

I just tried with a Criterion disc I didn't scan before and anydvd set to Auto and it still popped the region dialog with Region Free chosen. Status says: Note: automatic detection of region code not possible with this disc.

 

[Pete]

If I use "Always Ask" there's a popup with regions. On some discs I know for sure are region A locked (like Fantastic Mr Fox), Region Free is suggested on first scan. I did see discs that anydvd suggested are locked. I've concluded from that that it can't detect everything.

That "suggestion" says nothing. There's one bullet preselected, but that doesn't mean, that AnyDVD knows or even thinks to know anything.
When that dialog pops up, AnyDVD wants your opinion, that's all.
It probably preselects whatever you may have selected in an earlier run (or what AnyDVD may have erraneously automatically selected).

But clearly: AnyDVD only says a disc IS region free (this would be displayed in clear words in the status screen, not in the popup), when that disc has no BD-J and the HDMV code in MovieObject.bdmv has no check whatsoever for the region code register.