Pioneer BluRay drive - "Region A error" when playing US-bought BluRay disc

Hi,

Bought the Pioneer BluRay Player disk drive for my HP Multimedia Center m8150n running Vista. On the Pioneer cardboard box, the model number is: BDC-S02BK. On the imprinted label the model number seems to be: BDC 2202 (that is also shown in Windows Vista)

In Control Panel --> Device Manager, I set the properties of the drive to "United States", and it confirmed "You want to set it to Region 1?" and I confirmed that.

Attached is a picture of the error message I'm seeing when I try to play a Blu-Ray disc (the movie "Speed", bought at Best Buy or Fry's Electronics) in it:

"This disk has been encoded for Region A only and will not play on this machine. Please eject this disc and play on a Region A Player"

What is Region A vs Region 1?

Why would a US-purchased BluRay disc not work on a drive that's set to US region?

Any suggestions?

I downloaded the trial version of AnyDVDHD as was mentioned in previous threads
http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html

BluRay discs still won't play.

However, I don't see the error message above.

The disc looks like it's going to play, then I see "STOP" in green on top of the WinDVD splash screen. As though I had pressed the "Stop" button. I repeated this with several BluRays.

I was really hoping this drive would simply work...

I surfed the WinDVD site, and found the suggestion below. I was hopeful (it sounds like it should work!!), but it did not fix the problem:


Answer ID - 761171 - Region error message
Product and Services - WinDVD Version 8

Try to change one input on your computer registry:

Go to Start -> run -> type: "RegEdit"
Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\InterVideo\\DVD*
To the right, look for the "IOCtlFirst" item and double click on it.
Change the value from "1" to "0". Restart your computer.
Try to play the DVD again.

Final word from WinDVD Support, after my working on it ~ 6 hours, trying different things they suggested (changing the registry, de-installing WindVD LE (this was a total pain) installing their Gold version (initially would not install, then said "trial version has expired" immediately), is:

"Any edition and version of WinDVD does not support Blu-ray and we do not have a plugin for that."

and

"Our retail version does not support blu-ray. But since your version of the software is bundled with your blu-ray device, it should support blu-ray because the device manufacturer made a few tweaks to the software that would work with their device. Please contact the device manufacturer to provide you with support.

Please take note that Corel does not support OEM bundle versions. You will need to contact the OEM partner that packages this software with their product for further assistance on the issue you raised."

I'm on the phone now with Pioneer Support. He is going to have one of their engineers contact WinDVD.

As Sarah99 and others have said, PowerDVD Ultra ($99) worked perfectly in playing my BluRays with this drive. It worked for me first time (immediately) after installation.