I’m in the market for one. Just an ordinary player that’ll accept Region 2 DVDs. It doesn’t need to do anything but play the disks.
I’ve found a bunch of them on-line, reasonably priced, but the specs are beyond my understanding.
It’ll be hooked up to a second TV, so if it plays only Region 2, I’d be okay with that. It’ll be hooked to the TV that has the DVR (DirecTV’s version of TiVo).
I need help! 
Buy any cheap DVD player after googling for DVD Hacks- key sequences which will make the machine multi region- for the machine you intend to buy.
I use:
http://www.dvd.reviewer.co.uk/info/multiregion/
Most machines available in the UK can be made multi region very easily. One store even has the cheek to sell the hack as a photocopy for an extra £10!
Apex is generally the first place to go to. Remember, that if you’re getting European DVDs instead of Japanese DVDs, you’ll have to worry about the differences between PAL and NTSC. So, if you’re thinking about getting European DVDs, you’ll need to either 1. get a PAL to NTSC converter or 2. get a DVD-ROM drive that you can make regionless and watch the DVDs on your computer. I have the latter, though I’ve only ever watched one or two Region 2 DVDs, though I have thought about getting some DVDs from the Region 4 companies in the past. Same problem, I believe, with PAL in Region 4–I believe Australia and New Zealand do PAL with I think part of South America does NTSC and the other part PAL. (The reason is basically buried in either American or British influence.)
Of course, if you want to watch Japanese DVDs all you need is the player, which makes everything much easier.
I use Video Help for looking up hacks. I bought a Zenith 2201 nearly 5 years ago and I’ve done the switch regions things many times. It’s easy and uses the remote to just press buttons. I’d say go with a reliable product (seems as I remember Apex having reliability problems and being complained a lot about) with an easy switch. VCD enabling is another one to look for, my Zenith 2201 does that. Allowed me to order Japanese VCDs which are usually much cheaper the DVDS. Lower quality too but still nice to have that option.
I bought a JVC region-free player (with a PAL-NTSC converter built-in) online about 4 years ago. At the time, Family Guy and Futurama box sets weren’t even a thought in the US, so I got the player just to play those discs. Then I discovered how much better the Star Trek box sets looked from the UK and I started buying those, too.
If you’re going to get a region-free set, I would definitely recommend getting one with the converter.
If you only want to watch foreign DVDs (not tapes or broadcast signals), just get a player that has the PAL-to-NTSC converter build in. It’s much easier to convert the digital content between formats than to do it after it’s become an analog signal. I just did a quick search, and my player was cheaper than a stand-alone converter. I’ve only had it for a few months, but it’s been fantastic so far.
My head is spinning!
I’m in the US and I want to play Region 2 DVDs (specifically, Black Books, a UK TV series that I bought without checking the format first), so buying an all-region player with the converter built in sounds like the best plan for a non-techie like me.
RobotArm, what brand/model do you have?
I’m not RobotArm, but I have a Philips DVP642 player. It’s available from Best Buy for $57. It has the built-in PAL conversion. It’s not region-free out of the box, but you can easily find instructions for doing so on the internet. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it’s cheaply made and that shows, particularly in the remote control.
I have the JVC XV S500. It was about $225 (4 years ago). It’s replacement (XV S510) is $169 (from the same dealer). It’s pretty solidly built.
We have a JVC that’s almost 6 months old now. We’re not in our home right now, but I think it might be this one. We bought it through an Amazon seller (Bombay Electronics), and were happy with the customer service. It plays all our European DVDs right out of the box, no techie stuff required. We probably use it at least every other day (when we’re there, that is!), and have no complaints at all.
I love having a region-free player! DH just bought me the entire Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin series from the BBC for my birthday.
I have an LG DVD player. I’m in a PAL country, but have a few NTSC DVDs (like my Invader Zims!), and it seems to convert and play them well - but that said, I think my TV has an NTSC converter as well. The LG DVD player I got came with a printed sheet with the ‘region free’ hack inside the box. YMMV.
This is just what I needed to know – thanks, everyone.
Our current TV’s and DVD player are pretty new. I’ve never checked the specs to see if they might already have what I need. I’ll do that. If not, I’ll follow up on the recommendations for the player with converter.
Thanks!
I’d like to tack on a rider since it looks like all the right people are in this thread.
I bought “Juon” a few months ago but both my players show “playback prohibited by area limitations” on the screen when I load them into the players. The disc is marked “all regions” NTSC. The disc does play on my laptop’s DVD player.
When I google, I get all kinds of hits for the regionality of DVD players, but can’t find anything that tells me about an “all region” disc. So is there really such a thing as an all region disc and if so, why do my players refuse to play them?
Bonus points: how do I find out what the region code is for the DVD player in my (Inspiron 8500) laptop? I didn’t see anything helpful in device manager.
If you bought your computer in the US, then it should be set to Region 1.
As for the “all regions” question, the disc should be marked as Region 0. My copy of ABBA : The Definitive Collection is marked this way.
Most region protections are made to check and make sure your disc’s region is compatible with the DVD player. But there’s another, rarer, protection that checks the player to make sure that the DVD player has a region set (there’s no region 0, rather region free players or discs simply have no region code set) and that it matches the code of the disc.
Presumably your computer’s DVD player’s region is set to 1 and the disc has none so they don’t match and it wont play. Typically you get to change your region a small amount of times when you first load it up and then it’s stuck as that one code forever. Unless you do something with it. There are programs out there you can buy that can reset your region count, allowing you to change it indefinately. Or you can buy a new DVD player program that isn’t so concerned about the region.
It’ll depend on what program you have to play the discs.
I bought a Philips 727 two years ago and it just crapped out on me. I am about to purchase the Philips 642 that Dewey Finn mentioned for about $60. I expect it will only last a year or two, so why get it you may ask?
I does what I need. You can set it to be region-free with a couple of button presses on the remote. No need to download anything or have someone else do it (and charge you $20 or so.). It also converts PAL to NTSC without a problem. Some players; for example, the Sampo and (I think) the Apex, show a distortion when converting to PAL. This is a very important point if you are going to be watching PAL DVDs in the U.S.
If you want to spend a little more for a player that will likely last longer, I suggest the Oppo. It has been getting raves. I frequent the DVDTalk Forum International Section (most of the DVDs I purchase are from Hong Kong and Korea, with a few R2 PAL Hong Kong Legends DVDs as well) and people over there say this is THE PLAYER for the price range.
Yeah, but damn, it plays everything! And I’ve noticed that a lot more players, particularly from LG, feature DivX playback now. Methinks manufacturers are grokking why the Philips 642 sold so well…
I’m not quite sure what is going on here. There certainly is such a thing as an all-region DVD. I’ve got a ton of them. *Lots * of legit DVDs from Hong Kong and Korea are all-region. “All-region” means the same thing as “region free” or “region 0.” The code symbol of the little globe will either have a “0” in it or, more commonly, the word “ALL.”
Such a disc should play on any DVD player regardless of how it is set. The scenario of the player and the DVD not matching up (like what Fern Forest indicated) *can * certainly be a problem, but as far as I know, only in the opposite scenario. That is, a Region-coded DVD may in rare instances (called RCE encoding) NOT play on a DVD player that has been modified to R0.
I’ve had that happen a few times on my Philips. It’s an R1 player out of the box I’ve modified to R0. So those few RCE R-1 DVDs will not play b/c the regions do not match. No problem, really, as I just temporarily re-code my player with the remote to region 1 and I’m good to go.
But this would only be true in your case if your DVD Player were somehow already modified to be R0/region-free. Did you buy a modded player or did someone you know modify it for you?
DVP642!!!
Pros:
Great Player.
Cheap. About $60
With a code it can be hacked to be region free. So you can watch the “Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves” in all it’s full color gory.
Converts PAL to NTSC
Plays DIVX anc XVID avi’s
You can rip your tv episodes or ‘obtain’ them, and put an entire season on one, maybe two DVD+Rs. Imagine all four seasons of Home Movies on one DVD
Cons:
If you are planning on watching hard-coded or fansubbed anime, you have to reencode to 576x432 or demux the subtitle file.
Has some problem with some variable mp3 audio tracks.
You have to manually choose the subtitle file to play.