WinDVD8 bundled with Pioneer BDC-2022 BluRay doesn't work

[RykoDiscs]

Hi,

I posted about this problem to 2 different discussion forums, and everyone seems to be pointing to WinDVD as the likely cause of the problem:

My Pioneer BluRay drive (US-purchased BDC-2202) can't seem to play BluRay discs (also US-purchased.) The drive was bundled with WinDVD8 LE.

The error message I'm seeing when I try to play a Blu-Ray disc in it:
"This disk has been encoded for Region A only and will not play on this machine. Please eject this disc and play on a Region A Player"


It is running in my HP Multimedia Center m8150n running Vista Ultimate. The drive imprinted label the model number seems to be: BDC 2202 (that is also shown in Windows Vista)

In Control Panel --> Device Manager, I set the properties of the drive to "United States", and it confirmed "You want to set it to Region 1?" and I confirmed that.

According to Wikipedia, Region A and Region 1 both refer to the US.

Why would a US-purchased BluRay disc not work on a drive that's set to US region?

What I've tried (did not work):
I surfed the WinDVD site, and found the suggestion below. I was hopeful (it sounds like it should work!!), but it did not fix the problem:


Answer ID - 761171 - Region error message
Product and Services - WinDVD Version 8

Try to change one input on your computer registry:

Go to Start -> run -> type: "RegEdit"
Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\DVD*
To the right, look for the "IOCtlFirst" item and double click on it.
Change the value from "1" to "0". Restart your computer.
Try to play the DVD again.

That did not fix the problem.

Any possible things I should try?

[RykoDiscs]

Tried but did not work:

De-installed WinDVD 8 LE, and installed WinDVD 8 Gold.

Problem symptom: Playing any BluRay disc (Planet Earth, Speed, etc) result in either the words

"Eject"

or

"Stop"

in lime geen on the upper left of the WinDVD play screen.

[RykoDiscs]

Any suggestions?

[skier-hughes]

What happens if you try to play a locally bought/region disc, from where-ever you are, which I assume is not in the USA.

[RykoDiscs]

I am in the US.

I bought the Pioneer BluRay drive from the same store as the 2 BluRay discs, thinking I could just:

- Install the hardware
- Install the software
- Play the BluRay discs

10 hours of fiddling with it later, nothing works...

[sjj1805]

You have only half answered Graham's question.
What happens when you try to play a DVD (not a Blue Ray one - a 'normal' one) in your DVD player using
1. WinDVD
2. Windows MediaPlayer.

[RykoDiscs]

Sorry, I do not see where Graham is asking about multiple types of discs.

To answer your question sjj1805

You have only half answered Graham's question.
What happens when you try to play a DVD (not a Blue Ray one - a 'normal' one) in your DVD player using
1. WinDVD
2. Windows MediaPlayer.

1. With WinDVD, other DVDs play just fine, both video and audio.
2. I haven't tried playing BluRay using Windows MediaPlayer yet. Playing CDs from the drive does work.

More info: PowerDVD Ultra v7 + the Pioneer BluRay BDC-2022 drive work perfectly on my system when playing the same BluRays that fail with the bundled WinDVD software.

However, I've already paid $300 for the drive + bundled WinDVD software that's supposed to play BluRays, and having to buy a PowerDVD license ($99) would put the total cost to over $400.

[Smitty]

I had the same problem when I installed my BDC 2202. I first went to Control Panel> System> Hardware> Device Manager> DVD/CD Drives and tried to set the region there and found that as Windows sees the drive as a regular DVD drive only regular DVD regions (1,2,3...) are available as choices from the drop down list there. The solution is to start WinDVD, eject the disk, go to Settings in WinDVD, Blu Ray DVD (A,B,C...) regions are listed there.

Good Luck

[kuroyama]

I had the same problem as the OP. The technique in the post before mine let me set the region (yay!). The Region now shows up as Region A for BD, but nevertheless even after rebooting I still get the same Region error. Tried the registry change as well, but no luck.

Called Pioneer customer support half an hour ago and they said that there have been several calls about this problem recently. They're going to check with the engineers to see if they've figured out what's going on, and call me back Monday.

However, if someone has any other ideas then I'd love to hear, as I wanna watch my Blu-Ray film ASAP.

[sjj1805]

This is only an idea and may or may not work and is based upon something I did with another piece of software I was having issues with.

1. Turn OFF UAC (User Account Control)
2. Run the program and make any changes you require such as the change of Region.
3. Turn UAC control back ON.

Please post the result here.

[kuroyama]

I tried disabling UAC and running WinDVD, but still got the region problem.

As far as changing the Region while UAC is disabled, the region is already set to Region A (by a change when UAC was on) and so there's no way for me to "change" to Region A unless I were to waste 2 of my 4 remaining region changes by changing to say Region B then back to A.

[sjj1805]

It was worth a try, and Yes I agree do not waste 2 of the 4 region changes. Perhaps you can update this post in due course with any feedback you get from the Pioneer Engineers.

[kuroyama]

OK. Think I solved the problem. There seem to be two issues. First, the drive is not preset for Region A, so you need to manually set that. Second, if you have a previous version of WinDVD then it will cause WinDVD8 to report Region problems unless uninstalled beforehand.

Here's what you should do:

(1) Set Blu-Ray Region: to do this eject any DVDs or Blu-Ray discs. Then open WinDVD, right click, select "Setup", then "Region", then change from "DVD Title" to "BD Title" and click on the appropriate region for wherever you live if it's not already selected. Select apply, exit WinDVD and reboot the computer. Now try to play your Blu-Ray disc.

(2) If no luck yet then uninstall "Intervideo WinDVD" (there may be two files to uninstall). Reboot. Reinstall WinDVD (right click to "Explore" the disk, then open WinDVD folder, then click Setup). Reboot. Now try to play your Blu-Ray disk.

(3) Actually, when I did the install I disabled UAC. I think this was irrelevant, but if your player still won't work then go to the Start menu, type "msconfig" in the search box, select "Tools", then "Disable UAC", then "Launch". Then reboot. Then install as in (2). Then Enable UAC by going to the Start menu, type "msconfig" in the search box, select "Tools", then "Enable UAC", then "Launch". Then reboot.

******************************************

Note1: When I played around with some settings the Region problem recurred. Re-installing WinDVD fixed it again, but this leaves me worried that some little change will cause Region problems again.

Note2: The included software only plays stereo sound. If you have a good sound card then it can do a good job of simulating 5.1 audio, but I'm sure the real thing would be even more spectacular.

Note3: Anyone know how to upgrade to the version with full 5.1 sound? The "Buy and Upgrade" button on my software doesn't seem to do anything.