DVD Hacking

Introduction

I own a Grundig GDV 100D/002 DVD Player. This player is identical to the Philips 930/004 and very similar to the Philips 730/004 player.
As most of you may know, there is a way to change the region with the remote controller:

With the display saying "no Disc" press PLAY, 2, 7, 4 in sequence
When the display shows a series of dashes enter the code: 005 001 000 140 (This is for region 1)
Press PLAY again

To reset the player back to region 2 use the code 002 001 000 140.

However, recent versions of the firmware have a counter limit. You may only change regions 25 times. After that the player locks in the last region entered.

Solutions

I currently have two methods to reset the counter inside the player that only lets you change 25 times its region code. The first method is based on a PC parallel port interface. The second one is a traditional mod chip (microcontroller) solution.

Note: Both solutions only require you to open the player case but there is no need to solder anything to the board inside.

Fernando Birra