So… If a DVD is available in Europe, I’m under the impression even if I could get it shipped to the US, I couldn’t actually watch it, as the DVDs are encoded that way. Other than waiting, is there something else that can be done? (I ask as 1) I’m impatient, 2) I’m not sure this will ever come to the US, and 3) Hi, Opal!)
The video in question is “Julie, chevalier de Maupin”, if that makes any difference.
It’s possible to turn off the region coding for many DVD players. It’s probably outside the scope of the SDMB to discuss how. “This one guy I know” has done it to watch the Japanese version of ‘Leon’ in the US.
You could probably watch it on your PC.
There are several DVD vendors for this unit. None will ship it?
See also - The Complete Region-Free Guide
Region coding will be your smaller problem. Anything you buy from Europe is going to be in PAL, so unless you’ve got a PAL to NTSC converter or a PAL TV lying around, you’ll pretty much have to watch it on your computer.
As I understand it, one is allowed to make copies of books, videos, etc. for personal use. For example, I have a couple hundred CDs that I copied onto my Mac and then copied onto my iPod. Since I purchased the CDs, I have a ‘license’, as it were, to make copies for my own use.
Would it not be the same with a DVD? That is, if one buys a copy of the DVD, can he not make a copy in a different format as long as he doesn’t sell it, loan it, or give it to someone else?
There are two issues, region coding and video system. Even if you solve the region coding issue, you may have problems with incompatible video. In general, Europe uses PAL and the USA uses NTSC. You can’t watch a PAL DVD on an NTSC television set and vice versa. There are some DVD players that have built-in PAL/NTSC converters. There are also “international model” televisions that can handle PAL and NTSC. If you buy a DVD player with the right set of features, you can watch any DVD on any television.
I had no problem finding a multi-regional DVD player. I went to a store about four miles from where I live that specializes in international electronics equipment. They sold me a DVD player that will play any region’s DVD’s. Regardless of whether it’s recorded in either NTSC or PAL, it will work with any TV that plays either NTSC or PAL format and will do the conversion automatically. It can be plugged into either 110- or 220-volt outlets. Look for the nearest international electronics store. Do you live somewhere out in the middle of nowhere where there are no recent immigrants and no market for international electronics? Um, well, then, you’ve got a problem. You may have to drive a long way or order things online.
There are already many threads pertaining to copyright law. It’s always difficult to give definitive answers because sometimes the laws vary from one place in the world to another, sometimes the law is in flux while it tries to catch up with new technology, and sometimes some aspects of the law come down to matters of interpretation.
IANAL, but I have had to learn quite a lot about copyright for various reasons. Here’s a good rule of thumb. Unless you know for a fact that something isn’t protected by copyright, or you know for a fact that you have the right kind of legal permission to make a copy of something, then making a copy is probably against the law and something you shouldn’t do. However, if by making this copy you are not making any personal profit or gain, and you are not harming the potential of the copyright owner to get or make money from the sale of their work, and you are not doing any of this publicly, then what you are doing may be against the law but in practice nobody’s going to know and it’s highly unlikely that you will ever be charged with any crime.
The problems kick in when you do any of this publicly (and via a P2p network is very public) or make any personal gain or profit. The third bit, “harming the potential of the copyright owner to get or make money from the sale of their work” is the most controversial part, and the one that causes the most arguments. Let’s go back to the days of vinyl records and cassette tapes. I purchase the vinyl record. Do I have the right to make a cassette copy to play in my car? Some would argue yes, because I’ve already paid the copyrght owner when I bought the album. But the copyright owner might argue no, I should buy the cassette version of the album as well if I want the extra benefit and functionality of having the cassette version available.
Where I personally think it gets even more interesting is when you want something in a format that the copyright owner does not or will not make available, which has some relevance to the OP. Using my old-fashioned example, what if I want a personal copy of the vinyl album on cassette for use in my car, but the record company or the artist have intentionally not issued that particular album on cassette? I could argue that I’d pay the company for the cassette version if they could be bothered to sell one, but since they don’t, I feel entitled to create my own personal cassette copy. Many people might be sympathetic to this point ofview, but I would probably still be breaking the law, albeit in a way that is unlikely to ever result in a prosecution.
Answer to the OP: watch in on the DVD drive of your computer.
If you can’t “crack” your DVD player to swith regions, you can buy a cheap DVD-ROM (or DVDRW - they’re about $40 now) and add it as a second drive to your computer and make it region 2 (perfectly allowable) and watch the DVD on that.
You could also get some DVD ripping tools free off the Internet and do the conversion and burn it to a new disc, playable on your stand-alone DVD player. While I think this is perfectly legal (you’re making a personal copy) I don’t think the mods would let me post the names of the tools you need 
But you can Google around and see what’s out there.
France uses a different format called SECAM. If the DVD were available in PAL format, even if it’s region 2, I’d suggest the Philips DVP642 DVD player that I own. It was sixty bucks at Best Buy, has the PAL-to-NTSC format conversion built-in and the process for making it region-free is easily available on the Internet. I don’t know what this player would do with a SECAM disc.
The system (PAL/NTSC) doesn’t matter if you watch it on your computer.
Region coding isn’t a law, it’s just some stupid standard, so it’s not illegal to circumvent it.
I bought a region-free player for less than $100; they’re out there.
Actually, there’s no such thing as a SECAM DVD. All DVDs sold in SECAM countries are PAL, and all DVD players sold in those countries are able to output PAL video to SECAM TVs. That’s mostly because the standards for the two formats are almost identical - same framerate, same resolution. The only difference is the way color signals get outputted to the TV.
I thought the issue with copying DVDs is not copyright, but the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)?
By the way, you can’t just add a second DVD-ROM to your PC to do this. DVD playback software also have region codes, so you need two different software, or find a hack. It’s much simpler to find a stand-alone DVD player whose region code can be disabled easily. (Last I checked, the Philips DVP642 was popular for this purpose.)
I have friends who like to get DVDs sent from Australia, which is PAL, and a different region.
The found a region-free DVD player that will play both PAL and NTSC discs, for less than $100.
To properly play back a DVD on a PC, you need to be sure that two things are fixed : The region coding in the DVD drive’s firmware, and the DVD software. As said, there is different software you can use that doesn’t care about regions.
On the ‘hardware side’ : I don’t know that anyone outright sells region-free drives for the PC, but it is not too difficult to flash the firmware. This involves running a program from the computer with the drive installed. Flashing the firmware may void the warranty in some cases, but should not present a problem. Unless the drive explodes, you should be able to re-load the old one as long as you save a copy of it if the new one doesn’t work.
Even if you don’t flash it to region-free, on many drives the firmware has a built-in counter to program the region to the first few discs played on it (so it can be sold in any country without pre-programming). You can usually only switch about four times before the drive becomes locked to one region, though. Some software players even have the counter as well.
As to copying DVDs — copying of the DVD may or may not involve copyright infringement (may depend on how you use it). Copying of an encrypted DVD would be a violation of the DMCA in the United States (which makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection, even for noninfringing uses). Not all DVDs are encrypted, but most commercially available ones are.
Allow me to pimp the same player. I own a Malata DV-520 that can play just about any disc you can throw at it, but the Malata was pretty expensive ($299, I think).
My GF got me the Philips for my birthday and it’s just been awesome! As a huge plus over the Malata (and the main reason I wanted it), the Philips model can also play DivX or XviD movies burned to CD\DVD, which is really cool. The remote kind of sucks though.
I think Target sells them as well (used to anyway, haven’t been to Target in a while).