DVD region coding/hacking?

[Andy]

I've read that there are sites that provide passcodes or something to enable a DVD player to play DVDs from other regions, my questions are.

1. Are they legal?

2. Do I need to put another password in after I'm finished using the foreign region (region 1) to go back to my own region (region 2)?

[DaySaver]

I did this a couple of years back and it simply involved pressing buttons in a certain order/combination to bring up the relavent display. By choosing Region "0" you should be able to watch disks from any region (so there's no real need to go back to region 2 - although you can easily do so by repeating the same process).

As far as the legality goes, multi-region DVD players have always been on sale in this country, as far as I'm aware, so I don't see a difference.

You should be able to find the process on a website or forum, somewhere, by Googling/Yahooing the make, model and "region unlock" , or something along those lines.

Curiously enough, it turned out that my "Region 2" DVD player was set to "Region 0" anyway. Oh well!