Digital Video Discs (DVDs) bear a “region code” intended to
block their being viewed on players sold in a different
geographical area. Customers in Europe, for example, who order
DVDs from online vendors in North America may receive discs
their players won't accept. Many computer-based DVD decoders
are not hardware region locked and are physically capable of
playing discs from any region. Microsoft, however, have blocked
this in the DVD Player shipped with Windows 98 by a crude
software kludge. This document explains how to circumvent the
region lock and play any DVD on Windows 98. These
instructions apply only to the Microsoft DVD Player included
with Windows 98, not other players supplied with decoder boards,
and will not work if your DVD decoder card contains a hardware
region lock. See the full document for additional details.