I now have a region-free DVD player

FAP: Karaoke at Neds!

Sure as heck does. :-) Check the link, it'll give you the full technical rundown. And thanks for the link there, Toby!

http://www.area450.com/phpBB/
http://kickme.to/dvd105s

i really wish i had got one of the malatas rather than this sampo i bought a couple yrs ago. the loader is really a piece of crap. actually i am bidding on some dvd drives right now and might replace it

...and the second season of Futurama

You don't want a region free DVD player. You want a modded PS2. Why? So that you can learn Japanese and play such undeniably classic games as Super Robot Wars and SD Gundam G-Generation.

Region free AND you can pretend to be a giant robot with a disproportionate head for hours and hours of incomprehensible fun.

Pierre Junet -- name's a bit familiar. Details? Miyazaki in general is a must have, I've concluded.

Also the StudioCanal series has many French films from the '30s–40s by Carné, Renoir, Gremillon, etc. some of which include English subtitles. Finally there are two recently-released box sets of the 1980s films by Rivette and Resnais, respectively. The Resnais has Eng. subtitles (save for one film) the Rivette does not. The Resnais includes Mélo, which is...absolutely incredible and sometimes very funny.

Finally, there are a number of great Hollywood films that are right now only available on R2. Nick Ray's Johnny Guitar is one. That and all the films from John Ford's cavalry trilogy can be had pretty cheap. Cahiers du cinéma has a DVD series that's a bit more pricey, but it does include such goodies as The Magnificent Ambersons, The Big Sky, and Bringing Up Baby. (Actually the Ford calvary trilogy is available more cheaply on German DVDs, see www.amazon.de.)

The best place I know to buy French DVDs is alapage.com, but fnac.com is good too. Amazon.fr has high shipping charges but they're more likely to have all of the aforementioned titles in stock.

I don't know what you like, Ned, so I don't know if these are recommendations.

+ White, part of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy. However, I just checked Amazon.com and it looks like all three are (finally!) being released in one set in the U.S. as of next month.

+ The Buffy the Vampire Slayer full-season box sets. In the UK they're running up to a year ahead of the U.S. as far as release dates. (Yeah, so I'm impatient.)

+ A somewhat obscure WWII fantasy/comedy/romance called A Matter of Life and Death (U.S. title: Stairway to Heaven), starring David Niven and Kim Hunter, directed by Powell & Pressburger. Not only was this never released in the U.S. on DVD, it's out-of-print in VHS format, so I was thrilled to find this one on Amazon's UK site.

I've also turned to looking at European e-tailers for DVDs. I recently bought La Haine from fnac, which has a splendid transfer and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. The UK release from Tartan has smeared subtitles and a battered old print that looks like it's been ferried around all the cinemas in France. I believe that the Spanish DVD of Lovers Of The Arctic Circle is vastly superior to the UK Tartan disc also, and there's a two-disc special edition of La Dolce Vita available in Italy. I've no idea of whether it has English subtitles but the UKR2 release isn't in the correct aspect ratio.

http://www.bowjapan.com/histoire/dvd/img/dvd2.jpg

More info about this release here.

This hurts. Make it stop.

Region 1 - 1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories 
Region 2 - Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt) 
Region 3 - Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong) 
Region 4 - Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean 
Region 5 - 5: Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
Region 6 - Peoples Republic of China
Region 7 - Reserved
Region 8 - Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)

Has anyone ever seen a Region 5–8 DVD? I like how they parcelled about the first three or four to the only parts of the world likely to produce DVDs in significant quantities. I don't think India could be bothered to produce Region 5 DVDs, all the Indian DVDs I see are Region 1 or all-region.

It's called 'Region Code Enhancement' and it was introduced by Warners in 2000. But 3 years on I haven't heard loads about it so I guess it was a flop:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/13834.html

RCE/REA Compatible -- The Malata 520 is compatible with newer "Region Coding Enhancement" DVDs. To defeat RCE systems, you simply need to force the player to be region selective.

Instructions on how to do that are then provided on the page later. Rah.

If you want some good Aussie DVD e-tailers, then check out Family Box Office or DeVoteD.

You might also care to look at www.dvdcompare.org.uk for comparisons between Regions 1,2 & 4 discs, and also www.dvdpricecheck.co.uk which is self-explanatory.

i found this on the web:

"find a strange looking registry key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft
for example:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ `nk)a0 ]
"7d7b96c8e3280294"=hex(b):98,00,6a,4a,e8,fe,b5,a1

the values are different for every PC !!!!

Change it to

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ `nk)a0 ]
"7d7b96c8e3280294"=hex(b):

(zero-length binary value in regedit)

You now have Region Free DVD Player !!!!"

Is this safe?

http://www.dvd.reviewer.co.uk/info/multiregion/

Thanks Andy! (Now if only I knew what my DVD player was).

*bookmarks*

Region free player for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.

Also, streaming = amazing

I used www.dvdcodes.net for hacking both of mine, I think they only charge a tenner for the handset/disc (but they want them back). They've got a full list on their site of ones that you can do yourself, I think.

it's exactly because you have a 'shitty 30 quid one' that makes it easy to hack. the name manufacturers, your panasonics, sonys etc, especially those companies who also produce media, are under considerably more industry pressure to follow the dvd region coding practice.

> If you have a computer: http://www.videolan.org/
> Region free player for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.

not quite true either - i have friends who can't get this to work because the region encoding is done in their dvd rom drives. these often let you change the region code 5 or so times before locking it. again, cheaper drives are often easier.

How can I take screenshots?

To take normal screen capture of the video displayed by VLC:

*

Under XFree, add the -V x11 option to the command line. You'll have to find a X11 screenshot utility somewhere.
*

Under Windows, add the --nooverlay option to the command line and use Prt Sc button to put a screenshot on your pasteboard. You can then paste this picture in a picture editor or a Word document or something.
*

On Mac OS X just press command-option-3.

yes, one of these 8) i have a friend, someone who knows these things, who couldn't get it to work not matter what. um, maybe he was talking about his standalone dvd player and not his dvdrom.

here for instance: http://support.jp.dell.com/docs/storage/nec12x/en/Intro.htm
"A REGION CAN ONLY BE RESET FOUR TIMES" and i'm not sure even DeCSSJon's finest can do anything about that.

um, but dvdidle says: "It will work, even if you can not change the DVD drive's region anymore".

so you might be right. 8)

Get the BFI L'Age D'or/Un Chien Andalou set that came out recently. L'Age D'or should be seen by everyone.

(And no, not yet.)

welkin T506

anyone know a good up-rez, all region dvd player? my tv is a 32" panasonic widescreen 1080p.

re:region coding fuck one macbook

I mean seriously anyone got an easy workaround so I can get my frks&gks on!!

have sacrificed at altar of great god google but no joy

clue:VLC no longer sufficient

I got the Oppo DV-980H. It's not their top of the line player, but I was blown away by the picture quality, especially on PAL discs.

anyone know a good up-rez, all region dvd player? my tv is a 32" panasonic widescreen 1080p.

-- omar little, Thursday, April 10, 2008 2:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

any philips