DVD Region+CSS Free not allowing region-free playback on Matshita Drive - help!

Hi guys. I've just upgraded to a new laptop and I'm going through the motions of putting new software on it, but I'm not able to region-free it using DVD Region+CSS Free.

I'm running Windows XP, the drive in question is a Matshita UJ-845D set to Region 2 and I'm trying to play a DVD of Donnie Darko (Region 1.) I've tried playing back the DVD on PowerDVD 5.0 and WinDVD 4.0. In both instances the programs attempt to play the disc, show a black screen for a few seconds, then stops.

I can play back the DVD fine on my desktop which has its DVD-RW drive set to Region 2, using DVD idle pro (though an old version, which I got a couple of years ago) and using the same programs.

Does anyone have anything they can suggest? I know on the dvdidle website it says that they don't support Matshita XX-8xxx and SW-9xxx series drives, so my fear is that the Drive won't be able to use region-free software at all.

I suspect that since DVD Region+CSS Free does not support Matshita drives, that you're out of luck. However, aks1972 recently posted a similar issue and has had, at least partial success with his Matshita. You may want to look over the thread and discuss it with him. Perhaps the two of you can put your heads together and arrive at some resolution to your problem.

Anyway, the thread is right here.

Good luck, let us know...

Cheers! will do...

@NeonSign
I don't know much about these drives, so as usual I put Matshita UJ-845D into google and found the following information which also includes a discussion by other owners of this drive with similar problems. I noticed there are many answers to solutions recommended here, so you may save yourself some time by learning from experiments of others.

http://www.urbangiraffe.com/2005/03/08/panasonic-845/

I may post this link in the for help sticky as this drive appears in many laptops under different names and has very little FW support.

Mack