Most DVD recorders are permanently locked to their pre-determined region. The only way to unlock/"hack" a machine is by altering pre-existing firmware code or hidden menus. But most machines do NOT have such things.
But altering the DVD player or DVD recorder is not necessary to view DVDs from other countries or regions!
Your next course of action to bypass region "protection" is to simply remove it from the disc. Then all you're left with is PAL and NTSC video formats to overcome. However, most machines all over the world -- thanks to mass production in China -- are able to play both formats, having usually been manufactured for worldwide distribution.
You can read more on the topic of
removing region coding from DVDs at
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/show...ions-1948.html -- that page discusses ripping the discs (which thereby removes the region coding) and burning a new region-free copy that you can watch.
