New
#11
Firebird, thanks for your reply, so much. Your post prompted me to re-check my Device Manger panel for the DVD/CD drive.
Ooops, ... the label, "Disk Drive" threw me off and I opened the wrong Device panel in my Device Manager.
This DVD/CD drive is an HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GSA-H31N SCSI CdRom Device, as labeled in my Device Manger... see the screenshot linked below.
But I still don't know the precise brand of this DVD/CD drive... HL-DT-ST is the only description and the Device panel has no further indication of the drive's brand.
I have a PDF manual and an HTML manual for this computer, but it still doesn't tell me any more info about the actual brand of the DVD/CD drive... probably because Dell changed the make of that drive from time to time while making this model computer.
And I just noticed that there is a tab on that Device panel named "Region", and it says...
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Most DVDs are encoded for play in specific regions. To play a regionalized DVD on your computer, you must set your DVD drive to play discs from taht region by selecting a geographic area from the following list.
CAUTION You can change the region a limited number of times. After Changes remaining reaches zero, you cannot change the region even if you reinstall Windows or move your DVD drive to a different computer.
Changes remaining: 4
To change the current region, select a geographic area, and then click OK.
Current Region: Region 1
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And apparently "Region 1" is the United States, because I tried clicking on the U.S. in the scroll list of countries and when I click on it, then there is a field that shows "New Region" as Region 1 before I click OK.
Now this explains some things but not others. Most of the DVDs that I have from the U.S. actually WILL NOT play currently, even thought my drive is set for the United States region, but most of the Japanese DVDs that I have will play currently, but some will not.
And apparently I can't just change it back and forth more than 4 times to different regions to test it, which seems to be a huge limitation in this drive's function.
I wonder if that would make this drive's DVD reading capabilities any more universal by default if I updated that firmware for this DVD/CD drive.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks so much,
digiday