This player in incompatible with the region marking on this disc

[bobdadawg]

My Touch Audio player plays most DVDs fine, but some display a message "this player in incompatible with the region marking on this disc"?. Has anybody experienced this issue and knows how to fix it? I have gone thru the menus and tried different settings, but nothing has worked.

[Herk7769]

Are they commercial DVDs that were bought in the USA?

[bobdadawg]

Yes - they are DVDs that were bought new here in Washington. Night at the Museum 2, Top Gun, and Ice Age - Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Top Gun is Paramount, and the other 2 are 20th Century Fox.

[Camping Buddys]

Maybe the player is made in China! Lol.
Seriously, check the player "region settings" some players have the choice to select regions or auto regions, select NTSC. Our region is 1 or NTSC.

[bobdadawg]

I tried both the auto and NTSC settings. The message comes up the same, unfortunately.....

[F and E Damp]

There are a number of different regions in the world and each has its own blocking software so the people can't buy cheap copies from one region to play in another. As ex-pat Brits living in the US this has been a real PITA. The only real fix is to replace your DVD player with a "non-regional" player, which will play disks from any region. There are kludges on the internet that you can use to reprogram your DVD player, but they will void the warranty.

What really bugs me , as an ex-pat Brit, is that UK disks containing programs that can only interest residents of the UK and ex-pats are coded for the UK and Europe only. How many Germans or Italians want to watch British WW2 movies in which their countries are shown as Satan's cohorts? Ex-pats in other regions would love to buy the movies, but can't play them. I have a hard time believing that the disk manufacturers could ignore such a large market.

The only way to avoid the problem, other than replacing your current DVD player with an "all regions" unit, is to make sure any DVD you buy is compatible with the US code.

I'll dig back in my e-mail archives later and pull out an e-mail my son sent me about 8 years ago with a listing of the world-wide DVD codes and I'll post it here.

[Camping Buddys]

Here's the region map:

[Herk7769]

There is another option. Remove the country code from the DVD.

Using a program like DVDfab, you can copy the commercial content to a DVD-R and the result is a copy protection-less DVD with no country code.

[KyDan]

A couple thoughts to the original poster--
Did you buy the DVDs sealed from a reputable merchant- ie they aren't pirated copies?
Did you call Touch Audio tech support and ask them? Is the player in warranty?

[F and E Damp]

It's actually the disk that's incompatible with your player, not the other way round. In addition to Herk's solution, you may be able to get the manufacturer of your player to disable the country code. There are DVD players out there described as "country code free".

I've often wondered why the British entertainment/recording industry deliberately blocks a potentially large market for their DVDs by making them incompatible with players in Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, former "Colonial" Africa and other places where large numbers of ex-pats live.

[Toadman]

I agree with what most of the others have said, most newer DVD players will play any of these, but I have had similar problems with some cheaper models. I have DENON DVD players, SAMSUNG and LG and they play anything I have, in my collection we have over 850 DVD's and counting. I use DVD Cloner and copy disks to Hard Drive and then play them via wireless streaming to any TV within my network. Then burn a copy onto blank DVD and it should play on any DVD player. Sounds complicated, but really isn't once you have done it. DVD cloner is around $59 for software.