The Regionless DVD-Rom list.



In the first generation of DVD-Rom drives the region concept was not yet established.

The big movie companies who so far divided the world by the various T.V. standards (NTSC, Pal, etc...) started to fear the DVD. Since the DVD format is a digital medium and thus has no different broadcast standards for various world regions. In order to discourage cross-country purchases of movie titles, the studios came out with the infamous Region Scheme. This scheme basically divided our small planet into six regions.


However, not all regions were created equal.

Since 99.99% of the world film market is generated in the good U.S. of A (which is region #1 if someone is wondering), nearly all the DVD titles come out as Region #1 and only then transferred to the various other regions. However, not all titles are transferred, while others are modified and lose some of the perks that the original Region #1 title had.


At the writing of this article, the DVD-Rom drives are at their third Generation.

The first DVD generation was buggy, unreliable, unsupported and undesired. The second DVD generation was faster, more reliable, greatly supported, but lacked features (It didn't read certain types of CD medias).

The third DVD generation seems to have it all, it's even faster, more reliable, supports all the current media types. But alas, nothing is perfect, along with this improved generation, certain companies *cough*Creative*cough* started implementing the DVD Region Code directly into the Drive Hardware (firmware).

This abonomy will prevent you from playing DVD Titles from every region even if your decoder card or decoder software support multi-regions.

To help you on your quest for a working DVD-Rom drive, i will list any drive that is region-free or has some region-workaround that allows it to play any region. However, you don't really expect me to buy and test each and every drive, so please send me information by eMail with your drive model and manufacturer name (example: Hitachi GD-2500) with a note saying if you can play multi-regions with your drive. Or, if you can't *cough*Creative Encore 5x*cough*. The following are three lists, in green are drives that are known to be multi-region. In yellow are the drives that are suspected of being multi-region. And in blue are drives that are known to be region-coded (single region).

The information in this list is user-submitted. I have no way to verify that each of these drives actually works. Use this list only as a reference tool.

All drives unless differently specified, are IDE drives.

Certain Region Locked drives can be patched to be made Region Free using a special Firmware program. For more information on this, visit the Firmware information page.




And so it was listed:

The Good.
Manufacturer Model Generation DVD Speed CD Speed
Pioneer A01 1st 1x 10x
Toshiba SD-C2002 2nd 2x 16x
Toshiba SD-M1102 2nd 2x 24x
Creative Labs Encore 2nd 2x 24x
Hitachi GD-2000 2nd 2x 20x
LG DRD-820B 2nd 2x 20x
Matshita SR-8582 2nd 2x 20x
*Pioneer A02 IDE 2nd 2.6x 20x
*Pioneer U02 SCSI 2nd 2.6x 20x
Toshiba Notebook SD-C2002 3rd 4x 16x
Hitachi GD-2500 3rd 4x 24x
Freecom Taveller 3rd 4x 24x
LG Electronics DRD-840B 3rd 4x 32x
Toshiba SD-M1202 3rd 4.8x 32x
Samsung SDR-430 3rd 4.8x 32x
Panasonic SR-8583 3rd 5.0x 24x
Philips PCA532 3rd 5.0x 32x
DVS DSR-520H 3rd 5.2x 32x
*AOpen 9624 3nd 6x 24x
Memorex 632 3nd 6x 32x
*AOpen 9632 3nd 6x 32x
Hitachi GD-2500BX 3rd 6x 24x
*Pioneer A03 IDE 3nd 6x 32x
*Pioneer U03 SCSI 3nd 6x 32x
*Pioneer 103S 3nd 6x 32x
*Pioneer 113 3nd 6x 32x
*Actima AD05P 3nd 6x 32x
Toshiba SD-M1212 3nd 6x 32x
Hitachi GD-3000 3rd 6x 32x
JCCom JCM-632 3rd 6x 32x
DVS DSR-600H 3rd 6.2x 32x
Asus E608 3rd 8x 40x
EPO DVD-8212 3rd 12x 40x
Toshiba DVD-RAM SD-W 1101 1st 2x 16x
(*) = Don't touch RPC jumper (will cause the drive to lock)


The Possibly good.
Manufacturer Model Generation DVD Speed CD Speed
none none none none none


Drives that require a firmware update:
Manufacturer Model Generation DVD Speed CD Speed
Creative Labs 5240 3nd 5x 32x
Compaq GD-2500 3nd 4x 24x
Creative Labs
(Hitachi GD-2500BX?)
6240E 3nd 6x 24x
EPO DVD-8210 3nd 10x 40x
Delta OIP-DV1200A 3nd 12x 40x


Drives that are sometimes coded and sometimes not.
Manufacturer Model Generation DVD Speed CD Speed
Sony DDU220E 3rd 5x 24x


Drives that are always region locked.
Manufacturer Model Generation DVD Speed CD Speed
*Ricoh MP9060A 3rd 4x 24x
*Toshiba SD-R1002 3rd 4x 24x
*Toshiba (DELL Inp. 7500) SD-C2302 3rd 6x 24x
TORiSAN DRD-U624 3rd 6x 24x
Matsuhita UJDA710 3rd 8x 24x
Afreey DD-4008E 3rd 8x 32x
HP 9900si 3rd 8x 32x
*Toshiba SD-M1302 3rd 8x 32x
*Hitachi GD-5000 3rd 8x 40x
Hitachi *GD-7000 3rd 8x 40x
LG *8080b 3rd 8x 40x
*Pioneer 104 3rd 10x 40x
*Pioneer 114 3rd 10x 40x
*Acer DVP 1040A 3rd 10x 40x
*Aopen 1040Pro 3rd 10x 40x
*Toshiba SD-M1401 3rd 10x 40x
Triplex SHG12 3rd 12x 32x
Aopen 1240 3rd 12x 40x
*BTC BDV212B 3rd 12x 40x
*Creative (BTC) 1241E (BDV212B) 3rd 12x 40x
*Memorex (BTC) MAXX1240 (BDV212B) 3rd 12x 40x
*Hi-Val (BTC) HDVD12A-16R (BDV212B) 3rd 12x 40x
*Asus E612 3rd 12x 40x
*Hitachi GD-7500 3rd 12x 40x
NEC DV-5700a 3rd 12x 40x
BTC BDV212B 3rd 12x 40x
Fujitsu DVDA1240FA 3rd 12x 40x
Liteon LTD122IL4W 3rd 12x 40x
*Samsung SD-612 3rd 12x 40x
*Sony DDU1211 3rd 12x 40x
*Pioneer 105S 3rd 16x 40x
AOpen (Pioneer) 1640 Pro (105F) 3rd 16x 40x
*Pioneer 115 3rd 16x 40x
Toshiba SD-M1502 3rd 16x 48x
(*) = Can be made region free using a firmware replacement or jumper adjustment.


If you have a drive to submit to this list, please find out it's Model, CD Speed and DVD Speed then Submit it.





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