Roll back to November and my brother calls me from Germany:

Brother: I can’t play any of my DVD’s, only the one I got in Canada.  And it wont let me change the region back.
Me: How many times have you changed the region on your laptop’s DVD drive?
Brother: It asked me to change it when I put the Canadian DVD in but I haven’t change it before and now I need to change it back.
Me: Hmm, ok…

Followed by about 5 minutes of me talking him through various different things to try, and to also confirm to me that he couldn’t change the DVD region away from Region 1 (North America). In the end I’m not able to solve it, and we hang up with a promise from me to have a look at his laptop when he is back for Christmas in a few weeks.

Fast forward to just before Christmas and I’m having a look at my brothers laptop. Sure enough he has run out of changes to his region code and the various software hacks and downloads don’t work.  I even flash his DVD drive with the latest firmware as suggested on various web sites.  Still no luck, looks like he is going to have to buy a new DVD drive.  A search on eBay gives some promising results.

Just as I’m about to admit defeat and hand the laptop back, I download VLC on a whim – and it works! I have no idea how it works, I guess it just ignores the region and plays the DVD regardless.

Another satisfied customer