Toshiba SD3010KE DVD Player Region-Free Hack

I bought a cheap DVD player for the bedroom; a Toshiba SD3010KE, for under 40€ (reduced from 60€). Remarkable value for money, good build quality and a very nice picture (it up-scales) via HDMI, plays DivX and has DD/DTS capabilities (via co-axial out and/or HDMI), but unfortunately it was Region 2 locked. In this day and age Region codes should be a thing of the past; all that they accomplish is to drive people towards illegal downloads and the like.

Anyway, I searched around the ‘net for a region-free hack, but I couldn’t find one for this specific model; so I tried just about every workable hack I came across for every Toshiba model that I could find.

I almost gave up, but finally found one that works and it is simplicity itself. The original hack instructions are for the SD190EKB, but I believe that this also works for the SD4100 as well as my SD3010KE; so I thought that I would post this to tie the usual keywords, to my particular model, on search engines. Here are the steps to take:

1. Using the OPEN button on the player itself (not the one on the remote), eject the tray.
2. On the remote, press 9, 8, 7, 9, 0, consecutively (i.e. one after another).
3. You will see an on-screen message informing you that the player has been set to play region 0 discs.

And that’s it. You can now place a Region 1 DVD (or whichever other region you are interested in) into the tray; close it and it will play.

Also on this DVD player, it appears that if the tray is open and you press 3 on the remote that, you can switch the frame rates between 1080i/50 and 1080i/60. Handy for switching between PAL (/50) and NTSC (/60) format disks to reduce jitter and artefacts.

Y ahora, en español, para los que no se llevan bien con el ingles:

Como cambiar de región (zona) en tu DVD player de Toshiba, modelo SD3010KE

1. Abre la bandeja de discos con el mismo botón del player y no con el que está en el control de remoto.
2. Usando el remoto, teclea 9, 8, 7, 9, 0, uno tras el otro.
3. Aparecerá un mensaje en pantalla informándote de que el player esta puesto en modo de región 0.

Y con esto, felicitaciones; ya estas listo para ver cualquier disco de cualquier región/zona. Tu aparato esta librado.

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