Magnum Mania!

I know that to some people this might be a touchy subject, as it briefly touches on DVD burning, but note that I am not trying to start a debate, so don't go making one.

I want to purchase a Region 3 DVD (Not Magnum P.I. which is why this is in the beach bar). Now, I know it will not play in my Region 1 DVD player, but I've been told I can remove the region coding with a program like AnyDVD. That sounds great, my question is though, can I just slip a Region 3 DVD into my most likely very American PC-DVD drive? If I can, then perfect, that's a 5 minute job that solves the problem I've spent weeks trying to figure out.
By the way, the DVD is NTSC, which works for me.

And by now I know some of you are curious as to what the hell I'm trying to buy so here it is:
http://sensasian.com/product.php/en/V11525-D
No guarantee that's where I'll get it from as they are out of stock, but that's the copy with the right quality for me.

ADDED: I guess I should specify in my question, can I just slip it in the drive and, regardless of if it can be played, will it be recognized as a disk in the drive?

Find out what drive your PC has, then Google search on this topic... there's got to be a forum out there were someone has discussed this. I think things are on your side if you're using a PC.

I bought half my Magnum collection in the USA and can't play it on my Mac with its region locked Matsushita drive despite my best efforts! I shake my fist at you, Steve Jobs!

zebra3 wrote:ADDED: I guess I should specify in my question, can I just slip it in the drive and, regardless of if it can be played, will it be recognized as a disk in the drive?

If you are using a commercial DVD player you can't just pop in a different region DVD and play it. There are ways around it, but we won't go into that here.

If you are using a freeware or open source DVD player (like VLC), yes, you can play any region code DVD. These players ignore region coding.

I've had to deal with this quite a bit as I've lived in Asia, North America and Europe at different times over the past decade. Luckily in most places in the world other than the US and Canada, you can easily purchase a multi-region DVD player at any major department store. BTW, the region coding is NOT a legal issue, it's strictly a commercial control so companies like Sony are able to set prices regionally. So you're not breaking the law (at least anywhere I've heard of) by trying to get around the region code.

I've ended up ripping some into a computer file then re-burning with region code 0 - that will then work on any player. That's your best option I think if you want to keep a copy handy.

As far as computer drives are concerned, most I've dealt with are actually programmed to allow a region change five times. This is not something that you can get around with software as it's somehow (I'm no tech geek) integrated into the drive itself. I had this frustrating problem on my Dell laptop while living in Hong Kong, where I had a bunch of my own Region 1 DVDs and Region 3 DVDs are standard.

Essentially, I could change regions to watch a R3 disc, then back to R1, then back to R3 then back to R1. Then you're done...no more changes.

That's been my experience at least. Maybe things have changed since I've had to deal with it.