Posted by Jay G. on 02/17/06 00:34

On Thu, 16 Feb 2006 22:10:36 GMT, JAQK wrote:

> Any comments from those with region-free players?

It's been around for quite some time, the old OOP Image DVDs of Universal
films have it, but it's never really caught on.

It's been fairly easy to circumvent too, since only R1 DVDs have had it
yet. On my first region-free player, I had to manually switch the player
back to R1 to watch the discs. For the next 3 I got, they automatically
switch to R1 if the disc is all-region, which defeats the RCE check of the
machine's region code.

> Pardon my ignorance, but are region-free DVD players even available in
> stores in North America?

Not at most major retail outlets, at least not out of the box. A lot of
them are modifiable though, usually with just a few presses of the remote.
There are also a few smaller stores, online and off, that sell pre-modified
region-free players. A local independent video store rents out some
other-region discs and also sells and rents region-free players.

The majority of DVD players in the US are not region-free though, and
probably some 90% of American users of DVD are unaware there's even region
codes, let alone desire to purchase a DVD from another region.

-Jay

[Back to original message]