I have to admit that one of my guilty TV pleasures is watching Bonanza on TV Land while working out every morning. I’ve kept an eye out for the seasons to be released on DVD, but no luck yet. Somehow I came across this listing on Amazon.de: seasons 1 and 2!. While I can get that they include both English and German dubbed tracks, I don’t see listed any mention of what region they’re playable in, and Google-fu isn’t yeilding any luck.
Should I order them? I have no idea how to go about finding out whether or not they’ll ever be released in the US, or when.
Every DVD player I’ve ever seen has easily available instructions for disabling the region restrictions. Not that I’m encouraging such things, but still …
Actually, there’s nothing illegal or immoral about getting around region coding. The administrators of these message boards even allow discussion of the subject which, given their anal-retentiveness about discussing P2P and similar things, should tell you something.
It says the format is PAL, which is the european video system. We use NTSC so that pretty much guarantees the region isn’t right. My understanding, and hopefully someone who understands this better will come along, is that most dvd players in the US are virtually region-free. What I’m less sure about is the PAL vs. NTSC. If nothing else, you could probably play it in your computer.
Acording to this hop it is region 2, everything else would have been surprising.
Apparently there are no subtitles. That’s a good thing because for licence reasons some German DVDs come with obligatory subtitles when you select English audio. This way they are very hard to sell in non-German markets.
Totally useless Bonanza Trivia: In German the same guy provided the voices for Ben Cartwright and Darth Vader.
Here’s the player I have: Amazon.com listing–is the region 2/PAL distinction two separate issues? Even if I could bypass the hypothetical region lock, it still wouldn’t play because it’s PAL, correct?
I could play it on the computer, but it would be nice to be able to watch them while working out, and the elliptical is not near the computer.
In general, *most * R2 Eurpoean DVDs are PAL (Japanese R2s are NTSC). However, there are some Eurpoean PAL DVDs that are all region. Not a lot, but some. So yes, they can be two separate issues.
While true that many R1 DVD players sold in the U.S. can be hacked, not all can be. And it is more of an ordeal for some than others. Some it is as easy as a remote key sequence and others need a download. Some you just have to do once, and some you have to reset every time you put in a new-region DVD. Try the forums at nerdout.com. That’s pretty much the “bible” site for DVD players and region hacks.
Also, there are DVD players that convert PAL to NTSC. I have a dependable all-region DVD player that will play both PAL and NTSC with no distortion. Cost me $60 at Best Buy. There are more expensive models that you can purcahse on-line from places like HKflix.com.
This seems to be a spamity spam spam spam site where every link leads to a ton of ads, and it wanted to set 35 different cookies before it gave up. Am I missing something?
Yes, sorry for the confusion. http://www.nerd-out.com/forum/. There are discussions in the “All Other Players” forum if your particular player is not featured in its own forum.
Of course, that doesn’t really help you with the particular DVD you were asking about. But this is something to keep in mind the next time you are in the market for a new DVD player.