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I`ve done some research on my DVD-ROM drive and have come up with the following :

The drive hardware is a Compaq (Samsun OEM rebadged) SD612B DVD-ROM with the BL16 firmware. This is from the Driveinfo.exe program that was suggested to me by someone here. The drive is RPC2 region locked to region 2 but with a maximum of 5 region changes (4 left). The player software is Mediamatics DVDExpress v5.00.69.

I`ve tried to access the www.7thzone.com website to get info about this drive/firmware but there`s nothing listed for it. The Technical Support section could help but you have to sign up to do so and the sign up page ain`t workin`.

Can anyone else suggest a site that could help in determining if a firmware upgrade would make the drive region-free, and preferably region-specifiable to defeat RCE. Any ideas?

Regards,

T

Check out the Firmware Page site at www.firmware.com.bi

They list the following info about your drive:

-Compaq SD-612B (12X/40X)
(Known firmware : BQ04 / BL10)
You can make your drive region free (RPC-1) by using this patched Samsung SD-612 firmware (patch by John Johnson). Note : Once flashed, the drive will be detected as a Samsung SD-612.

So yes, it sounds like you can make the drive region-free. I doubt you can make the drive region specifiable (for RCE) with a firmware upgrade - but you can use a utility like DVD Genie to fool Windows into thinking you are using a specific region, once the drive is region-free. You can get DVD Genie from http://www.inmatrix.com/files/dvdgenie_download.html

PS The www.inmatrix.com site should have lots of other useful info for you.

Good luck!

Have you not tried using DVD genie ?

I thought this application gave you region free access to
all DVDs ?


Are you using a hardware decoder card or just software decoder ?