DVD refuses to play

[David H]

I have a DVD which is a perfectly good one and works on my laptop, but Real Player gives this message " The DVD cannot be played. Key exchange for DVD copy protection failed."

I would have thought it was faulty, the help centre doesn't address this message, but all my other media players won't play it either. The only clue is it's NTSC although I'm sure the site I got it from was in the UK.

There's nothing wrong with the DVD as it plays on a very old laptop so what's up with this message?

[Ethel]

It is an NTSC - it will play on some dvd players, but not yours.

It was made for the American market.

[Phantaxus]

try this

http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html

[David H]

Very odd Ethel, I bought it from a large British company who ought to know what works here and doesn't. If it was dodgy, as in dubious I'd check out slysoft, but it's a kosher DVD with no reason not to work and you have to pay for slysoft so won't add to my losses. I can't even get it to work on the laptop now so I'll call the company tomorrow and complain as it's clearly something wrong with the DVD.

[LeMarchand]

The UK standard is PAL, whilst the US use NTSC. Many large net suppliers offer Region 1 NTSC copies as they are usually out earlier than the R2 PAL versions, often with superior extras.

[David H]

Very good if they work. My video player does both but I have 3 different DVD programmes on each computer and none can sort this one since the only time it played. I'll try fixit but reckon the supplier will know what's going on as it's clearly not a computer fault.

[LeMarchand]

It's quite likely that you DVD drive has used up its "free" changes - you can normally change region something like 5 times before the drive locks to one region only.

There's some software ( I use http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-region-free.htm ) that will unlock locked drives; watch out, some software will only work to prevent drives getting region-locked and won't unlock locked drives.

Further reading on region coding:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code#

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_lockout

[David H]

Thanks lemarchand, I haven't called the supplier yet but is odd it won't work on two computers, one which rarely uses DVDs. And that was the one where it worked once and never again, I think on Windows Media player but not totally sure. I will try those links but I reckon they'll be sending me a new one as it's probably a faulty batch.