So you have a shiny new laptop with a built-in DVD player, but feel hampered by the constraints of Region coding? Want to play disks outside your region without having to resort to firmware upgrades or other crude hacks?

Then you need DVD Region-Free. This remarkable $39.95 software installs seamlessly onto your desktop or laptop computer and will transparently let you play a DVD from any region without changing settings on your player software or machine.

I tried it with a new test Samsung laptop and was amazed when I switched between playing a Region 1 NTSC disc and a Region 2 PAL one without touching anything at all. I’m sure that there are discs and/or DVD drives that it won’t be able to cope with, but there’s a free evaluation version available on the site which lets you try before you buy. Astonishing stuff indeed!