I’ve mentioned before that I can only purchase the various Classic Doctor Who DVDs in Region 1. This kind of sucks because a lot of good titles are out of print in Region 1 and very hard to find (and really expensive if you can find them). Also it seems that some titles aren’t going to be released in Region 1 either. It’s not feasible for me to get a multi-region player at the moment. I’ve got a blu-ray player and a Region 1 DVR/player that’s only a few years old, so I’m not looking to get rid of it just to replace it with a multi-region player (and I highly doubt they make any that have a built in hard drive anyway).

Well, I just discovered I can play Region 2 DVDs on my desktop computer’s DVD-ROM drive. A friend sent me a movie on DVD for my birthday, which she had to order from the UK as it hasn’t been released Stateside. It’s in Region 2 and natch, as soon as I popped it into my DVD player, I got the region error. I remember reading an article online which claimed that you can play other region DVDs on your computer if you have VLC Player (which I do). I wasn’t sure if this was actually true, so I popped the DVD into my drive, chose to play it in VLC Player and it worked! I honestly wasn’t expecting it to because I don’t always believe everything I read, and I can’t count how many times I’ve read how you can do this and do that and it ends up not working (especially those articles about how to make your player region-free. Nope, tried that, never works).

I’ve got a handful of 1st Doctor stories, all of the 2nd Doctor ones, and a few for the 3rd Doctor all in Region 1. But I’m thinking of getting some of the hard-to-find ones in Region 2 to play on my computer. Plus there’s also the special edition version of The Enemy of the World that was released last year in Region 2, which I highly doubt will ever be released in Region 1. The extras alone make me want to grab that one.

So, long story short, this was a nice discovery. If anyone in Region 1 is thinking of purchasing Region 2 DVDs and doesn’t have a multi-region player, this may be a good option.

Update: It seems VLC Player can play DVDs from other regions, but your DVD drive could still be region locked. I discovered that I can only change the region of my DVD drive 5 times before it locks on the last one. I did manage to find a way around this so if anyone is interested, leave me a comment and I’ll fill you in.