You could also try to make your DVD drive region free. There are lots of resources on this on the net, like:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=106479
which I found via:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=e...e+Search&meta=
I've never done this and it sounds like it can kill your DVD drive altogether (from my small amount of reading), but it would certainly mean not having to rip dvds to get them to work
The top link also mentions this software as a method to circumvent region codes:
http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-region-free-lite.htm