Must dvd players can be recoded all you need to do is go online look up the make of dvd player and then input the code shown into dvd player and region vanishes in most cases some are made to be normally the more expensive ones.
As in say you buy an Alba, tesco value one or other cheap brand these are regionless, whereas : Sony, Philips etc are all regioned
Yeah VLC is the best on PC works on all Mac, window etc and you don't need to change computers region to use it

Sadly they changed the region coding on Blue ray as we used to share region 2 with Japan which meant dvds imported from there used to work here but now...they're region 1 or something mean!