How DVD Regions Are Selected for Use by Windows 98 DVD Player

• Microsoft Windows 98

SUMMARY

This article describes how the DVD Player tool in Windows 98 handles DVD region selection.

MORE INFORMATION

The initial default DVD region is chosen during Windows 98 Setup when you select a country in the Establishing Your Location dialog box. If you choose None for a country location, the default region selection is based on the country code and time zone.

The first time a DVD movie is inserted in the drive, Windows 98 compares the region on the movie disc with the region selected during Setup. If the DVD movie has a different region than the region selected during Setup, the default is changed to match the DVD movie. If the first DVD movie inserted in the drive has only one region on the disc, Windows 98 uses that region as the default, regardless of everything else.

Once the selected region has been used to watch a movie, you can change it four times, for a total of five possible regions. When you insert a DVD movie, if the disc is from a region other than the default, a dialog box is displayed that informs you that you have inserted a disc from a different region. This dialog box displays the region for the inserted movie disc and the current player region, along with a list of new player regions and countries you can select. When you select a new region, a warning is displayed stating the number of region changes remaining before the change is written.

The DVD-ROM drive enforces the number of changes. Each time the region is changed, the new region is written to the DVD-ROM drive firmware. Once the limit for region changes is reached, the DVD-ROM firmware locks out further attempts until the drive unit is replaced or reset by the manufacturer.

Keywords          : kbtool win98 
Version           : WINDOWS:98
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbinfo 

Last Reviewed: January 27, 1999