My husband says there a lots of forums on the internet to tell you how to "hack" each brand of DVD player. The one we have at home has been "hacked" so we can play my region 1 DVDs as well. So google 'hacking dvd' and you should come up with something. As for having help at Curry's.. you just have to get a sympathetic salesperson.
The trick now, is about Blu-ray... not hackable, because the region code is actually on the disk itself, not the player. Each movie studio makes it's own decision on whether to put the region code on it (Universal is one that NEVER puts a code on so can be played on any Blu-ray machine.)