Finally worked up the courage to un-lock the DVD drive on my PC. I
dislike the motion picture industry telling me from what regions I can
watch DVDs. It’s especiall irritating when considering that many fine
DVDs such as this and this are only available as Region 1. The fact that the MPAA feels I should have to jump through hoops in order to give them money has got to be corporate stupidity of the highest order.

So I mosied on over to the Firmware Page,
downloaded the patched firmware and uploaded it with the manufacturers
utility. The windows diagnostics reckons that I only have one region
change left on my drive. The good news being that it remains at one
change left regardless of how many times I change it. Huzzah!

On a slightly unrelated note I’ve had a number of fairly new DVDs go
south on me. There doesn’t appear to be any damage to the disks but
they are skipping like crazy. I may have to use vobcopy to try and salvage them. Something else the MPAA doesn’t like. Fair use, say I.