Make your DVD Drive play all DVDs

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 30, 2007
Updated • Jan 8, 2013
Hardware, Video
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3

Today I had a problem playing a Region 2 DVD on my Region 1 DVD drive connected to a PC running Windows. I was asked to change the Region of my DVD drive to play the DVD movie and that I would only have 3 changes left before the change would become permanent so that I could not make a switch afterwards anymore. This was a relative new DVD drive that I had connected to my computer and the message was highly irritating as I did not want to risk that I could not play DVDs from other regions on it. I mean, I bought those DVDs and there is no real reason why I should not be able to play them on my PC or any other device with a DVD Player.

I know however what I had to do to make the DVD drive play DVDs from all regions without the irritating message. The method makes the DVD drive region free, basically.

I had to update the firmware of the DVD drive with a modified firmware that makes the DVD drive region free. Here is how I did it. First thing I had to do was to write down the exact model of the drive as it is important to find the correct firmware for it. You can find that information by pressing Windows Pause, clicking on Hardware and there on Device Manager.

Locate the DVD / CD-Rom drives entry and expand it. If you look at the picture below mine is called GSA-H10N and was manufactured by LG. (You find the company logo on the drive itself normally).

Now that I had the drive name and model I went to the firmware page where modified versions of firmwares are published on. I had to search for the drive using the information that I retrieved and found the drive on the page. I downloaded the latest firmware to my PC. All I had to do afterwards was to run the file on my system which only took the click of a button (the only one available) and the new region free drive was available on the PC.

I did check the region of my dvd drive with Drive Region afterwards and it turned out that it was indeed region free afterwards.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on November 22, 2013 at 10:22 pm
    Reply

    VSDC v Camstudio what is your call Martin?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on November 22, 2013 at 10:28 pm
      Reply

      I really like VSDC right now, it works just fine. Camstudio is excellent too, but my vote goes to the newcomer for now.

  2. InterestedBystander said on November 22, 2013 at 11:31 pm
    Reply

    I’ve been pleased with the Firefox add-on, Video DownloadHelper. I haven’t had it not record anything, but then I haven’t used it for anything but FLV files. Records as mpeg4, which can be burned to DVD and played in a standard DVD player.

    1. zen said on November 24, 2013 at 4:30 am
      Reply

      @interestedBystander: use it too but it’s useless for the mp2t format used by pbs frontline. GOM player does play the first few seconds captured by download helper but nothing else after that. download helper probably stops after the first packet and the stream starts to buffer as rickxs mentioned. have notified download helper peeps. still looking for a way to do this. haven’t found anything yet in the forums i’ve visited.

      cheers!

  3. rickxs said on November 23, 2013 at 12:02 am
    Reply

    just 1 problem with this method Martin ,its when the stream buffers -you capture it !
    Example: Try to get ch4OD [uk] who use RTMPE — I don’t think there is a solution for this to download to the PC , I live outside the UK & use Mediahint & watch it though another stream other than CH4 , they don’t even let you buffer ahead ,you click pause & it stops any data build up,so buffering is prevalent enough to be unwatchable

  4. Nhick said on November 23, 2013 at 4:02 am
    Reply

    Been using camtasia for awhile now and works just good for me but it is always good to have options though.. nice find.

    Nhick

  5. www.cyberkey.in said on November 23, 2013 at 7:00 am
    Reply

    Nice software !! But I will prefer camstudio!!

    1. jeffcard said on September 13, 2016 at 10:27 am
      Reply

      You might try acethinker screen grabber, free as camstudio. I always use it to capture stream video. It worked pretty well all the time.

  6. Jogya said on November 23, 2013 at 9:53 am
    Reply

    How about recording a live streaming video when viewed in full screen mode? This article has no mention for that mode.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on November 23, 2013 at 10:04 am
      Reply

      It supports full screen as well, but I have not tested it in games or apps that do not display window borders.

  7. Karl said on November 23, 2013 at 8:16 pm
    Reply

    How about recording a stream from say, Hulu, or Netflix, or a studio such as ABC, or Fox? Can these be recorded as well?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on November 23, 2013 at 9:03 pm
      Reply

      I’m not aware of any limits.

  8. rickxs said on November 23, 2013 at 11:20 pm
    Reply

    ”How about recording a stream from say, Hulu, or Netflix, or a studio such as ABC, or Fox? Can these be recorded as well?” Karl

    if you can play it — it will record it ,your problem will be your IP address
    ie.what they allow to view from other countries

  9. green said on November 27, 2013 at 1:20 pm
    Reply

    Looks nice. But I find their website a little, well, suspicious. I have no strong basis for that. But there are no names of the people involved. Not even where they are located. No userforum. They have what looks to be pretty advanced products for free. How is that possible economically?

    1. Erin said on May 8, 2016 at 11:51 pm
      Reply

      Be wary. Your instinct is correct. The file I tried to download for camstuido was actually a disguised artemis trojan virus. I have flagged this site as unsafe and urge you to do the same.

  10. Olsi said on June 2, 2014 at 5:58 pm
    Reply

    For me everytime I try it gives a “statsfile not found” error

  11. Mickey said on January 11, 2015 at 2:53 am
    Reply

    Is there a way to record live streaming video and have it start and stop (on a timer) during a certain time of day when I am not at my computer?

  12. Erin said on May 8, 2016 at 11:47 pm
    Reply

    I went to the link you have here for camstudio and attempted to download the free version 2.7 and it was actually a disguised trojan virus that I downloaded, it was labelled as camstudio.exe however McAfee identified it as Artemis trojan malware/spyware. Therefore I assume the site is bunk and I will block it and identify your site as unsafe

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on May 9, 2016 at 6:14 am
      Reply

      Hi Erin, McAfee is wrong. CamStudio is not a trojan but ships with something that is called Install Core which integrates third-party offers into installers.

      https://www.sophos.com/en-us/threat-center/threat-analyses/adware-and-puas/Install%20Core/detailed-analysis.aspx

      Do you also identify Google, or whichever service you are using to search, as unsafe if they link to the site?

      https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=iw4wV7bWMuba8Afo4rzIBA&gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=camstudio

  13. Shabalala said on August 14, 2016 at 8:28 am
    Reply

    Audio does not record – only option is microphone – really dumb!

  14. Leonard said on August 24, 2016 at 7:28 am
    Reply

    If i download and use Camtudio: My ehm… laptop crashes…. :(

  15. ELLAS HAMFRED said on May 9, 2017 at 5:45 pm
    Reply

    thats good service i’ish all of you to join it

  16. Christopher brown said on May 22, 2017 at 4:52 pm
    Reply

    I’ve just install the software and no problem recording but the audio does not record any solution to get round this issue.

  17. Anonymous said on June 29, 2017 at 7:08 pm
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    no, all of these screen recorders have the same problem, they don’t record audio. they just don’t tell you that beforehand.

  18. Yayagal said on July 10, 2018 at 9:34 pm
    Reply

    This program does not work at all. No matter what I do, it tells me it can’t record because the settings are wrong. I’ve tried with the default, I’ve tried adjusting settings, nothing works. It simply will not record. On top of that, the audio is set by default to “do not record audio” and there is NO alternative. Piece of junk program.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on July 11, 2018 at 1:48 pm
      Reply

      That is strange. I just checked again and the program works fine on my system. Have you tried updating video card drivers?

  19. Eve W. said on March 11, 2021 at 10:18 am
    Reply

    Thanks, VSDC Free Screen Recorder works well for me. BTW, I find the video downloader AnyVid video downloader is capable of downloading streaming videos from websites. It saves time but it could not record video chat.

  20. Miranda Mccoy said on April 24, 2021 at 2:24 pm
    Reply

    I have tried several solutions to record streaming videos but there are three solutions which worked for me every time. Applications like camstudio and ScreenRec are the right option to go with when it comes to recording streaming videos. In order to record streaming videos ScreenRec also provides cloud storage to access recorded videos anytime you want.

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