Slashdot Mirror

Try buying a player in the US that can circumvent regional coding from any major retailer. They simply don't exist.

Screw major retailers. I spent about 10 seconds on Google and found all of these:

• Zone Free DVD
• DVD City
• Overseas Best Buy
• 220-Electronics
• J-List
• and a whole hell of a lot more

DVD City sells them. Here's one by Daewoo. More expensive than a plain old region one, but it works with NTSC and PAL, or so they say.

It's been said that justice is equal, but the rich can afford more of it.
When it comes to lawsuits, The Big Guy can win by default because cases are too expensive.
With DVD players, you're at the will of that pesky CSS when it comes to playing foreign flicks... unless you can afford otherwise. Ditto for Macrovision, etc.
It's still the case, but knowledge is quickly becoming the new currency: a little know-how replaces the money the average jane needs to run an end route.
The only question you have to ask yourself is... would the MPAA/RIAA put lives and other industries at risk with myopic legislation designed to artificially protect their bottom line?

Right, but you can buy a Macrovision-free DVD over at DVD City. Don't want it? Buy without!

Many CD-Rs are "invisible" to DVD players' lasers. The specs should mention whether they can handle CD-R(W)s. Here's a link to a part of a DVD FAQ with a little more info. http://www.dvdcity.com/officialfaq.html#2.4.3 Andy

You can buy region-free DVD players in the US. MPAA member Sony, for example, sells one through DVD City. Of course, the MPAA is trying to counter this, but my guess is that the cat-and-mouse game will be won by the hardware makers (and consumers).

You can buy region-free DVD players in the US. MPAA member Sony, for example, sells one through DVD City. Of course, the MPAA is trying to counter this, but my guess is that the cat-and-mouse game will be won by the hardware makers (and consumers).

http://dvdcity.com/codefree/codefree index.php3

Code-free dvd players. Some Macrovision free as well. Fully legal, apparently, as several makers (including MPAA member Sony!) are shipping them.

It's nice how the (mostly) free market works. Looks like Pioneer has found that customers know no borders...

sulli

Only because they slipped past the lawyers. Manufacturers don't sell them as non-regional models.

They don't, but other, smaller companies figure out how to 'region hack' the players, mod them and sell them for an extra 100$ or so. They even back up the warranty too. www.dvdcity.com has them, as well as many other sites. Look for 'code free'.

It's also possible that SCEI will have to deal with formal complaints and legal action from U.S. film studios over this debacle.

A lawsuit at this point would set an interesting precedent, don't you think. I mean,what about the region free DVD players that are available from places like http://www.dvdcity.com, among other sources? Are these modification outlets going to start getting sued over producing region free players?

Too bad they can't stick with producing region free players. Heck, that shoots the value of the PS2 way up in my book.
--

Maybe you should have, *sigh*, read the answers to these many questions you refer to and perhaps memorized them too.

Maybe you should have, *sigh*, read the answers to these many questions you refer to and perhaps memorized them too.

There are plenty of places that sell DVD players with the region lock removed. I bought a Pioneer DV-606D from DVD City. It autodetects the zone and you never even notice that it has zones. In England Code Free DVD sells really nice ones that are guaranteed to work on all DVDs, even in the future, but they are more expensive, and most of them require that you change zones on the remote everytime you change to a disc with a different zone. I'm sure that there are more places too, but those were the two main ones I looked at.