Notes from searching the Internet for DVD Copying software

DVDxPlatinum sounds good.  For $99 you get this and another program named
Video Vault.  E.G. http://www.dvd-burner.ca/DVD-X-Platinum.html

But in http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/268378, somebody says
  "the combination of DVDFab Decypter, DVD Decypter, DVD Shrink and DVD43
   has kept any dvd backups that many members of this site have done with
   great quality, great speed and all at a price of $0.00..."
and later, he clarifies with
   DVDFAB Decrypter:   http://dvdidle.com/free.htm
   DVD43: www.DVD43.com
   DVD Shrink: http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD-DVD-Tools/CD-DVD-Rip-Other-Tools/DVD-Shrink.shtml

I downloaded and installed DVD43 to my laptop.

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Notes from when I learned a bit about DVD regions codes on January 15, 2004.

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See http://www.mvps.org/marksxp/WindowsXP/dvd/regions/regions.php
for a good map of the 6 defined DVD regions world-wide.

  Region 1 = Canada and USA, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, the Virgin Islands,
             and some islands in the Pacific
  Region 2 = Japan, Western Europe (including Poland, Romania, Bulgaria,
             and the Balkans), Turkey, Middle East (including Iran & Egypt),
             and South Africa
  Region 3 = South East Asia (including Indonesia, South Korea, Hong Kong,
             and Macao).
  Region 4 = Australia, New Zealand, South America, most of Central America,
             Papua New Guinea, and most of the South Pacific
  Region 5 = Most of Africa, Russia (and former Russian states), Mongolia,
             Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and
             North Korea.
  Region 6 = China and Tibet

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  One device property of a DVD drive, is what region DVD's it will read.
Typically, a drive allows you to change its region 6 times before locking
itself at the last region.

Note this is a drive firmware setting, not a Windows registry setting, so
to override this, you need to fiddle with the drives firmware.

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On my T21 laptop, my DVD drive is a "Matshita DD-ROM SR-8147 C221".

To enable it to play multi-region DVDs,
http://forum.digital-digest.com/archive/topic/14015-1.html says,

    All you need is the soft "DVD Region-Free".

    It allows you to watch all region DVDs on your region-locked DVD drive.

    You needn't hack DVD drive (flash firmware) which is sometimes dangerous, useless
    or unavailable.

    DVD Region-Free also disable region check for popular software-based DVD players
    such as PowerDVD, WinDVD and CinePlayer.

    Other features include Region-Free for RCE DVDs, Macrovision-Free, Operation-Free,
    Direct-Play main title and run self at DVD players startup automatically.

    You can download it at <http://www.dvdidle.com/download/DVDRegionFree12.exe>


I started to download this, but it said it was only a 30-day evaluation and after
that, I should pay or remove it.  I didn't bother.