An unfortunate discovery

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but, I wrote awhile back that I have a new Toshiba laptop now, as seen here in my main DA account: http://www.deviantart.com/view/28666989/[]http://www.deviantart.com/view/28666989/

However, I recently found out that, since my lappy has a DVD-RAM drive, the software I used to overrun DVD regions on my old laptop is no longer compatible(my old computer had a plain old CD/DVD-ROM drive). Which means, I can no longer enjoy the DVDs I have from other regions, including The Secret of NIMH, the uncut version of The Plague Dogs, and a couple others. :cry:

I'm currently searching for alternate software which will do what the original program did(speaking of which, I paid $25 for the 'lite' version of that software--great software, so long as you don't have a DVD-RAM drive). There is AnyDVD, but I don't want to have to spend money again to do what I could easily do before.

By the way, do any of you computer nerds(okay, I AM a computer nerd, but I don't know everything)know what seperates DVD-ROM from DVD-RAM drives? Is it simply a matter of whether a drive can write to DVD or not?

However, I recently found out that, since my lappy has a DVD-RAM drive, the software I used to overrun DVD regions on my old laptop is no longer compatible(my old computer had a plain old CD/DVD-ROM drive). Which means, I can no longer enjoy the DVDs I have from other regions, including The Secret of NIMH, the uncut version of The Plague Dogs, and a couple others. :cry:

Have you tried using the software on your new computer? A DVD writer shouldn't be that much different that it can't be unlocked, though if you can update to a newer version of the software it might help. However, without knowing the specific model of your DVD-RW drive, I wouldn't be able to tell you how to disable the region encoding. At the very least, if you can provide us with the exact model number/name of your laptop?

By the way, do any of you computer nerds(okay, I AM a computer nerd, but I don't know everything)know what seperates DVD-ROM from DVD-RAM drives? Is it simply a matter of whether a drive can write to DVD or not?

Basically, yes. There are a number of different writable formats, however: DVD-R/W, DVD+R/W and DVD-RAM. I'm hoping that you got one that writes to more than just DVD-RAM disks, since that would be pretty useless. But the main difference is that it can write as well as read CDs and DVDs.

I was told that my laptop can write to DVDs(I made sure I bought one that could, since I've thought about backing up all of my files to a DVD-R rather than four CD-RWs). I haven't tried it yet, so I'm not sure if it can write to them: I'll have to look in the manual.

I have tried DVD-Region Free+CSS Free Lite on this new system, and it doesn't work, even with the newest version.

Anyway, my laptop herself is a Toshiba Satellite A105-S2712, and the drive is a Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-841S. DVD-Region Free+CSS Free Lite doesn't work with Matshita drives, as described in this sidenote on DVDidle.com:

"NOTE: DVD-RAM, Matshita XX-8xxx, SW-9xxx series DVD drives, and Torisan DRD-Uxxx series DVD drives are not supported now, and there is no plan to support them. But you can watch and copy CSS encrypted DVD movies when the drive region and disc region is matched on these DVD drives."

It is by my own error that I didn't know of this before I got my new computer: I only noticed it recently, after a couple weeks of having my computer.