I’m looking to buy a DVD player that will play movies from any region. I’ve looked around at a number of web sites that sell them; from what I can see, these players (e.g., Panasonic, Toshiba) all have after-market modifications. I can look up product reviews for the basic player, but have no way of judging the reliability of the guys who do the modifications. Anyone have any good /bad experiences with a particular DVD player or the company they bought it from? Also, how much did you pay for yours? (I can spend about $225 max.) Any and all comments are appreciated.
(By the way, it would be great if the DVD player would also play CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, MP3s, etc., but it’s not absolutely necessary.)
I’m in Australia, and I don’t know where you are, but I’m guessing the purchasing options would be similar.
For me, it was a toss-up between a Panasonic unit for around $400 or a Sony for the same amount. Both of them also play CDS, CDRs, CDRWs, MP3 etc.
The Panasonic needed a firmware update to play all regions. According to the sales guy, it was a matter of calling Panasonic who would ship me a CD (or DVD or whatever) that, when inserted, would “unlock” the player, or somesuch.
The Sony came multi-region enabled out of the box. I ended up getting the Sony because I wanted to play foreign DVDs straight away.
Can’t remember the Panasonic model but the Sony one is a DVP-NS305.
I recently bought a JVC XV-S500BK for $225 (incl shipping). It plays all regions and has a built-in PAL-NTSC converter. It also plays CDs, CR-Rs, CD-RWs, MP3s, and display most JPEGS.
I have a Nintaus that plays everything and is code free. The only problem I have ever incountered is when switching from one zone DVD to another zone without turning it off/on. Other than that minor thing, I love it.
I saw one once @ circuit city (circuitcity.com) for about $79. It said region free on the front of it. I don’t know if they carry them anymore. You could call them & ask & they might have free shipping.
This site has a bunch of them, but here is today special:
Code & Region free dvd player: Code Free DVD player with built in pal/ntsc converter, 110-240 volts, plays RCE and REA discs, manual selection of regions; comes with free s-video cable (normally $18) and 1 year warranty. Was $279 Now only $109
Thats a JVC- they are cool.
In particular, they have an extensive comparison of all dvd player features and a list of dvd player hacks often needed to disable the region code mechanism. I have absolutely no idea as to the legal stance of such hacks.
Some of these I’m not sure of because of the filter here at work. But there are some good links there.
Best buy had one DVD player that I bought for my Dad for $50 ($70 in rebates!) It’s like $120 now, or so. I forget the brand, dangit! It’s not a name brand though but it is cool. I bought it specifically because I thought he might want to watch French DVDs and I knew there was a region free hack.
Actually I think this DVD is the cheaper model than the one I got for my Dad. They don’t have his listed on the internet.
You can find the hack on one of the links above. This one I have to warn you is pretty annoying. I would have looked for another one for my dad if I knew about it. Every time you remove the disk you have to hack the DVD player again. And it’s kind of scary because you change from NTSC to PAL and back again. In that inbetween time the screen goes all screwy and it’s hard to fix. If you can’t fix it then you have to reset the DVD player with a code. I wrote down the remote keypresses for my Dad so he doesn’t have to worry about what’s on screen. So far, he does like the DVD player though. It’s just that the macrovision and Region free hacks don’t stick.