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Region Free DVD players


bertrand

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I know I have brought this up before, but this kind of fell off my radar and now is back on.

Amazon sells a few Region Free DVD players, they are pretty cheap. Do they really play any region or are there glitches? Are these legal? Do people care anymore?

Right now, I just need it for one DVD, Weather Report Live in Cologne, but there are others I had my eye on I did not buy because of this issue.

Or is it still possible to find a secret code online that unlock my Samsung DVD player? I can look up the model if needed. 

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I was in the same situation in regards to a European encoded DVD burn of Sammy Price and the Two Tenor Boogie at the Bern Jazz Festival, the only known video of Percy France. So I bought this back in November:

https://www.amazon.com/LP-099A-Multi-Region-Player-Remote/dp/B0779PBD4P/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=region+free+dvd+player&qid=1593771148&sr=8-3

(was only $24 at the time so not quite as cheap now)

It's performed perfectly fine as our new DVD but I will say that it sometimes takes a little longer to track and start playing after the DVD is inserted.

(You do know that programs like VLC handle any DVD encoding, right? If your speakers are good and have a nice big screen the old desktop can handle the DVD. But if you want to watch on the super big screen or gotta be in the barcalounger to really be comfortable ....)

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I've bought a region-free DVD player (already made region-free) and it worked fine.  I also punched in the secret code on a second one and that also worked.  Most of the instructions are still floating around in places like Reddit.  I'm fairly sure that the sales of DVDs are probably even worse relative to CDs, so this isn't the highest priority of the studios, though they aren't about to abandon the region-locked system.

Every so often I consider getting a Blu-Ray player but it is a bit harder to get an all-region player relative to how easy it is to obtain or mod a DVD player.

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I bought a region-free DVD/Bluray player in 2018, from 220-electronics.com. It is a Sony BDP-S1700. 220-electronics makes a hardware modification to the circuit board to make it all-region. I actually talked to the technician who makes the modification. The modification costs $40 on top of the $99 non-modified price. No codes or anything else needed to play any DVD/Bluray. Since my purchase I am extremely happy- I have played all kinds of DVD/Bluray discs with no problems. I highly recommend this company.

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3 hours ago, Stonewall15 said:

I bought a region-free DVD/Bluray player in 2018, from 220-electronics.com. It is a Sony BDP-S1700. 220-electronics makes a hardware modification to the circuit board to make it all-region. I actually talked to the technician who makes the modification. The modification costs $40 on top of the $99 non-modified price. No codes or anything else needed to play any DVD/Bluray. Since my purchase I am extremely happy- I have played all kinds of DVD/Bluray discs with no problems. I highly recommend this company.

I think this is the same one that I bought--in fact, didn't we correspond about it off-board?  Anyway, completely agree--I bought it because I wanted to get a UK box-set of Woodfall films that had no apparent prospects for a North American release.  It also came in handy when I wanted the uncut BBC versions of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People.  No issues whatsoever with the player, and I needed something to play domestic Blu-Rays as well anyway.  

Edited by ghost of miles
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I bought my Pioneer region-free DVD player years ago from Bombay Electronics in Chicago.  I've never had a problem with it.

https://www.bombayelectronics.com/collections/dvd-blu-ray-players

It was my suspicion that Amazon began to carry them because Spanish language discs are Region 4, while the US and Canada are Region 1.

I got mine because Amazon UK (Region 3?) sold a number of '60s movies I wanted.

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4 hours ago, GA Russell said:

It was my suspicion that Amazon began to carry them because Spanish language discs are Region 4, while the US and Canada are Region 1.

I got mine because Amazon UK (Region 3?) sold a number of '60s movies I wanted.

It's my suspicion that Amazon began to carry them because of all the dog-gamn Anglophiles we have amongst our Great American Midst!

I don't know if you trust Wikipedia or not when it comes to barbet-level info, but they say that:

Most DVDs sold in Mexico and the rest of Latin America carry both region 1 and 4 codes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code#:~:text=Most%20DVDs%20sold%20in%20Mexico%20and%20the%20rest,in%20the%20same%20Blu-ray%20region%20code%20%28region%20B%29

However, Sony counters with:

Selling multi-area discs is not a common practice. However, some DVD movies are not region coded and will play on any player, regardless of the region in which it was sold. These discs may be labeled Region 0 or All. Many discs created with home-video capture software are coded as Region 0 and should play in your DVD player.

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00022799

Amazon says that for Blu-Ray that shit is a lot more post-global than it is anything:

Blu-ray Discs

  • Region A/1: North America, Central America, South America, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia
  • Region B/2: Europe, Greenland, French territories, Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand
  • Region C/3: India, Nepal, Mainland China, Russia, Central and South Asia

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201889230

So i dunno, sounds to me like everybody wants everything from everywhere, And it sounds like if you're getting a bootleg from home (or sending one back home), then it might be a moot point anyway. And i also gotta think that a lot of what's for sale in various convenience stores is going to be the path of least resistance for all concerned.

But i gotta tell ya' - going back 25 years or so, I'm thinking that the market was at least as much for Regions 3 & 5 as it would have been for Region 4. B/C i knew cats (and chicks!) from those regions that would get packages from home and they had a way, if you know what I mean.

Big news for me here and now, though is that you can get an apparently good quality player for under $50.00. What am I waiting for?!?!?!?!?!?!?

 

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4 hours ago, JSngry said:

Big news for me here and now, though is that you can get an apparently good quality player for under $50.00.

Looks like that model isn't full 1080p; only "supports 1080p."  But the LG at $59.95 is full 1080p: https://www.bombayelectronics.com/collections/region-free-dvd-players/products/lg-dp132h-region-free-dvd-player-hdmi-1080p

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On 7/3/2020 at 1:56 AM, bertrand said:

I know I have brought this up before, but this kind of fell off my radar and now is back on.

Amazon sells a few Region Free DVD players, they are pretty cheap. Do they really play any region or are there glitches? Are these legal? Do people care anymore?

Right now, I just need it for one DVD, Weather Report Live in Cologne, but there are others I had my eye on I did not buy because of this issue.

Or is it still possible to find a secret code online that unlock my Samsung DVD player? I can look up the model if needed. 

You can look up your player model here and see if there is a region-free hack code for it:

https://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks

Many DVD players had hidden menus to enable region-switching. There usually aren't any glitches, you just hit the correct key sequence on the remote, and you're able to play a non-region-1 DVD just fine. 

Blu-ray players are different, and require a hardware modification to be able to switch regions (usually it's nothing more than a jumper plugged into a specific connector on the mainboard, but this typically involves opening up the player to access the mainboard). 

I haven't had a player that *wasn't* region-free/switchable since 1999. If I were just now getting into multiregion players, I'd buy a multiregion blu-ray player, but this is dependent on how many blu-rays you have or expect to have in the future.

Also, not all players are created equal, and some produce better picture quality than others, but it's gotten much harder to find high-quality universal players since Oppo exited the market. 

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