Query: Region-Free DVD Players

Anybody have one of these things? Are they worth it? Of course, I guess it depends if some of foreign DVD titles are better than US counterparts. Example: I hear the Back to the future trilogy overseas as a DTS track not found in the US...

If a company made a universal, progressive scan DVD player (DVD-A, SACD, HDCD, mp3, AAC, WMA, DTS Dolby Prologic II/IIx) I would consider getting one, depending on price. With all things, something new is bound to come up.

 

Regions are something the major studios made sure was inherent in the format. That may never go away. As far as some imports, there are some that have been Region 0 (Region free) as far as discs.

Making your drive region free can take some ingenuity, purchase of chips, soldering or even paying to have it modified. I would not suggest any of these things unless you have a very good reason to permanently modify your DVD player. Some modifications can ruin the use (or make difficulty of) normal playback. APEX DVD players sold at Wallmart used to have a user-friendly insider, but that's long since past.

So if it's a Kung-Foo movie or maybe something like Godzilla's Revenge of The Jellybeans, you might want to find your answer on www.videohelp.com and look under lists. Some players can be modified, some welll...... can't. Else, you can purchase 0-Region DVD players from tech warehouses and some online wackos such as on eBay. Watch yer waller and Caviat em-something.

I'm afraid that's it. The rest edges illegality, so I hate to Gort myself. Sorry!

 

It's fairly easy to find multi-region DVD players - as Sckott said, on-line or on Ebay. But you can also try any local Chinatown or any electronics store with a foreign clientele. You can usually pick up a cheap multi-region player for a hundred bucks or so. It may not be the greatest quality player, but it beats monkeying around with a region 1 player...

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=50599&item=5701977117&rd=1


If you try one send me a review.

 

You can also buy an AMW dvd player at Circuit City (the last time I checked, the least expensive model cost $30) and enter a few codes on the remote control to unlock the player so that it plays any region. Since the dvd player also does a good job of PAL to NTSC conversion, it's a very inexpensive way to add true multiregion capability to your system.

 

Some players can be turned into region-free by punching certain sequence of keys on the remote control.

 

Region-free players are common outside of the USA. Here in New Zealand it's all but impossible to sell a DVD player that isn't region free. The reason is simple: the largest collection of titles is region 1 (that's the USA and Canada) with many titles that will never be released in region 4 (New Zealand, Australia and , er, South America - now that's a community of interest!)

Region free players are hard to find in the USA because of the flood of region 1 titles and because most Americans don't even realise that there is regional coding.

If you're after a region free DVD player, then make sure that it can convert PAL into NTSC. DVDs from Europe and Australia/New Zealand (regions two and four) are likely to be PAL, and won't play on your NTSC only TV. In the rest of the world, multi-format TVs are common, but in the USA... (you sensing a pattern here?)

 

I'm sure the many millions of people in South America find New Zealand to be a community of interest as well!




Back on topic, there is also the issue of regional code enhancement:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/rce.html

 

I would say whether or not a region-free/standard-converting DVD player is worth it for you probably depends on how happy you are with the choices available to you in your particular region. I found it necessary to be region-free and PAL compliant(my region-free player is a Malata N996, now discontinued) just because of my own viewing tastes and a desire to have as many options open to me as possible.

To cite a specific example, I love the film A Fish Called Wanda and on DVD I want to hear John Cleese's commentary, see the deleted scenes, and watch the documentaries available to viewers in the UK. On this side of the pond, MGM thinks what should be available to viewers is the movie, a trailer, and a "collectible booklet." If and when MGM decides to release the UK special edition in the US, there is no guarantee that they will be able to (or even bother to) liscense all these features for release over here. When MGM released The Pink Panther Collection Stateside, two documentaries, three cartoons and Peter Sellers TWA commercials were all not carried over from the UK set. These sort of occurences are common; don't even get me started on the unavailability of uncut versions of movies with rights held in R1 by companies like Miramax.

A good source for information about how different movies are represented on DVD in different regions is DVD-Basen. You can search by title in different regions and find reviews and stats on over 100,000 titles. You might want to search some of your favorite movies there and see what options are found in other regions. The different aspects of region-free players are discussed at the Nerd-Out Forums, which I've found helpful in the past. Again, depending entirely on your personal taste, you might find that once you go region-free, you'll wonder how you ever got along any other way.

 

A good site for comparisons is www.dvdcompare.net

 

Many of the DVD players sold here are multi-zone. Stores rent both Zone 1 and Zone 4 discs.

Here you see a rare animal: VCD-only players, used to watch pirated movies and shows that are readily available anywhere. I'd guess they play CDs too.

 

Thanks for all the tips/links, especially ClausH with the DVDCompare.net site (just signed up for its Yahoo listserve). One of these days, I'm gonna have to pick up a region 3/Hong Kong version of "Army of Darkness"! (Lots of other titles to consider as well.) Since I'm currently on the job search and living with parents, don't intend to get a region free DVD player anytime soon. Never new about RCE until now. Same thing with multi-system TV and PAL to NTSC conversion...

I did a google search and happened upon a cool link: http://www.regionfreedvdplayers.com

Sidebar: wondering if US-based laptops/Computers can play more than just region 1 DVDs...

I've been hearing a lot of HD-DVD (blue ray, etc.) and I read by about 2005, there should be some decent players out there. Pioneer and Toshiba look to be good contenders. I figure if I wait long enough, I'll be able to save up for a code free, Tivo-enabled, HD-DVD player/recorder with all the bells/whistles/formats. (Especially if I live in a small apartment, which will probably happen. I hate clutter...)

Check out this link:
http://www.hddvd.org

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IIRC, I have an Elektrahome 8181-A, DVD player. (I'm not at home right now, as my girlfriend and I are hosting a Calgary Flames party at her place.) It's all regions. There is a hidden menu that I found out about. Find that menu and you can pick any region you want, or at the bottom of the region selection there is a "bypass" function. This allows me to play any DVD. I have Region 2 discs, Region 4, both PAL as well. This machine takes care of that too. Purchased it 2, 3 years ago for $150. at Costco. This player even handle such Region 1 discs as Braveheart which are supposedly coded to stop machines playing the disc if they are not a Region 1 player.

 

I updated the firmware on my cheapo $80 dvd player (bought a year and a half ago, and in Candian dollars), and now you can choose which region to play in, or include every region (by the way, is there a difference between every region and no region?). Also, this upgrade allows me to disable macrovision (when the picture fades in and out when connected through a vcr, to prevent a high-quality copy). I find that it was the best thing I could have done, and I haven't suffered any ill effects from it.