Unlocking Region Code with Philips DVD Player

Cols has been telling me the past couple of days that our brand new Philips DVP5996k player does not play our original DVD's. I didn't get to test it until today. I popped in my X-Men Trilogy original DVD and, indeed, it complained of incompatible region. Seems that this unit is region-locked. Very strange since practically no DVD player sold today still follow the antiquated copyright-protection of DVD players based on "regions".

I called Western Appliance Greenhills and talked to their Philips guy. He walked me through the process of removing the region lock by hitting some secret buttons. I don't know if this will work for all Philips DVD players, but this was the sequence for my DVP5996k:

1. Open the tray
2. Click the setup button on the remote control
3. Go to preferences
4. Type 138931 on the keypad (The screen displays the current region where the player is locked)
5. Use the up/down arrow key to select Region 0 to open it for all regions

That's it! After that, it happily played all my original Region 1 discs.