Page 1 of Hacks for Alba 103

I have recently purchased The Patriot for the US. However I am unable to play it on my Alba 103 DVD. I thought that my DVD was a multi region player and I have previously bought other DVD`s from the US and they work without a problem.

Can someone please help me as I would like to be able to play the Patriot and any other DVD`s like it.

Hi
The reason the Patriot is not working is due to the fact that Warner has encoded it with RCE . This is messing up a lot of multi region players . Unless you can manually set your machine to Region 1 you are up a certain creek without a paddle . This has messed me up too . I`m gonna have to go out and buy a player that will work .
Incase you don`t know what RCE is . RCE disks will ask your machine if its Region 1 , if the answer is yes then it asks if it is Region 2 if again the answer is yes ( multiregion ) then it will refuse to play . Hope this is helpful

Thank you for my reply how will I know if I can manually change my DVD player to region 1 like you suggest?

Did you got a remote hack for this machine or was it chipped ?? If it was chipped you need to find out from where you got it , if it is manual or auto setting for Multi Region . Some players have a secret menu with options for Region settings.

Could anyone tell me. Is the Alba 103 multi region or not? Also, what is meant by the term "Hack"? Is this player any good, or is it lousy quality? and is NTSC a region type or does that just relate to the television.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 25th October 2000, 16:53

Yes the alba 103 is multireigon out of the box a hack is used usually from the players remote to make a new player multi reigon and in some cases macro free. the alba being multi reigon out of the box no hack is nedded just put in any r1 or r2 disc and it plays until now that is as it does seem to have fallen foul to theese new rce encoded discs.

If rce discs do come out on reigon 2 this would probably mean the alba would become usless as it would also refuse to play an r2 rce encoded disc so it might be worth giving it a miss.

Until the advent of rce this has been a good value player being multi out of the box and the fact that it also plays mp3s not the best picture in the world but at £140 who could possibly grumble most mags have given it a good review considering the small price tag.

Ntsc is not a reigon type in laymans terms it is a format used in the us for viewing motion pictures in the uk we use the pal 50hz format some uk tvs support ntsc some dont. People who have tvs that dont accept NTSC need to have a PAL to NTSC converter built in to their dvd player otherwise the picture will be displayed in black and white.

To my knowledge there are no hacks for the alba 103 at this time.

Hi Graeme

No I did not get my DVD player chipped and as yet I have not found a hack. The hack is what I am trying to find!!

If you know of any one that might know could you please ask them!!

I may be wrong but I`m sure a friend of mine who has an Alba 103 said that his was multi-region straight from the box but there was also a menu screen available under "preferences" were he could choose to make it region specific. If this is the case you should be able to make the player Region 1 specific for RCE encoded disks and multi-region for all the others.

Again I apologise if I`m wrong but I`m sure that`s what he said.

Interesting Steve - any chance you could enlighten me about the preferences setup screen. I have it on a menu select, but it is not selectable. As the player shows it you must be able to get at it - but how? Please could you check with your mate how he was able to set the region?

Roger,

View this thread for further info (this is the first time I`ve tried posting a thread reference so sorry if it doesn`t work !)

http://www.dvd.reviewer.co.uk/forums/thread.asp?Forum=176&Thread=6768

Looks like my mate may have assumed you could do something you can`t !