Anyone know about computers and DVD's and regions?

[jabberwocky]

Okay, here's my question. I would like to get ds1 the new In The Night Garden dvd but we are in the US and it is only formatted for European dvd players. I wondered if I could save it to my computer and then burn it on a DVD that is compatible to our player? Is this just a totally stupid and unreasonable idea? Does the computer have the same incompatibility issue?

Oh, that would be the answer then! Now all I have to do is find a friendly geek

You can buy a fairly cheap region-free DVD player. I think Amazon had them for a while for under $50. You can also do a hack to make a R1 player Region-free (invariably, this means tapping a special code on the remote cotrol - you can look up using Google to see if there is a hack available for your machine).

You can switch between regions on a PC, but after five switches, it locks in place. I'm sure there is a hack around this, though.

Thanks! I wonder if I switched regions on the Pc to play then saved it to burn on a region 1...

Sorry - don't know a huge amount about fixing your DVD player - however, I can help you on the DVD thing. Regions are in place to stop copying and (originally) import issues - so, copying on your PC onto a differnt regional DVD is not going to work. You can buy a really cheap multi-region player nowadays (about $50). As far as I can work out, "In the Night Garden" is only released on a Region 2 code at the moment (not sure which part of the States you're in, but your player is probably a Region 1 or a Region 4).