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There are plenty of them - they are not illegal in the UK so companies can openly advertise chipped players.

Have a look at http://www.techtronics.com/ for example.

Lucasfilms does have THX certification and specifications for certain home-theatre amplifiers (namely $$$ ones), supposedly for utterly perfect sound reproduction. Any corelation between the movie's name and the certification?

The ISS is another place this caused problems, so much so that NASA got one modified.

There are plenty of multi-region players that correctly handle R1 RCE discs...

Techtronics in the UK do their own multi-region modding and I've not managed to confuse it with any R1 RCE title I've thrown at my Sony from them.

Also, I've tested the cheap Cyberhome CH-400 player (after modding via keypresses) and that's fine with RCE when set at region 0.

Not sure how other modded players fare, but there are tons of ways round it.

1. Don't buy Sony or any other branded DVD player. I know someone with a 600 Sony DVD player and the picture is crisp but it plays nothing apart from local DVDs.

If for some reason you 'must' buy an expensive branded player in the UK,Techtronics can often make it multi-region.

Though why anyone would pay 600 quid when a 30 quid player will do more is beyond me.

Tk

the sample rate and range [of DVD Audio], as well as it being PCM are all inferior [to SACD's pulse density modulation technique].

Does SACD necessarily have an advantage over DVD Audio in representing baseband audio? DVD Audio can be sampled at up to 192 kHz, which can reproduce frequencies up to about 87 kHz (allowing for Nyquist rate and a 10 percent margin for rolloff of real low-pass filters), which is four to five times what the average human being can hear. The 24-bit depth is possibly deeper even than the thermal noise of the air around you. Finally, DVD Audio has the "DVD" name attached to it, meaning you'll get multiple Forum licensees producing competing products, instead of SACD, which looks to be another Betamax dominated by Sony.

I don't think there are SACD walkmans, though they would not be completly useless as there is always a seperate two channel version if there is a multichannel version. You can however play most SACD's (if they are hybrid) in a walkman.

Most stereo SACD titles I saw at a local Best Buy store were not in fact hybrid. I've found that a larger percentage of DVD Audio titles have Dolby Digital back-compat sections for DVD Video players than SACD titles have Red Book back-compat layers for CD Digital Audio players.

This page came up.

Whoops, the 30fps PAL is known as PAL60, not PAL30... 60 fields per second.

Sony's most excellent Lissa does, and I've seen MOTU's rackmount firewire audio gear, which seems to chew up and spit out multiple tracks, and doesn't really dent the CPU (which is important when capturing and altering the stream).

If I could just go straight from the firewire bus on my iBook to my stereo, and miss all the electrical noise it makes (or at least have it error-checked), it would be cool...

The station has an international crew, NASA just wanted them to be able to see movies in their native languages if they wanted. Doing it Holywood's way would have meant shipping up 5 identical machines.

And a good place to buy region 1 DVDs is Play 247 who's prices are cheaper then the high street.

About a third of my collection is Region 1 and I bought both Pitch Black and Resident Evil before they came out in cinema here. But that hasn't stopped me from going to see the films in cinema after I saw them on DVD, and I recently payed to see both Blade Runner and Aliens in the cinema - both films I own on DVD already.

"Does this happen elsewhere?"

Yup. Check out UK firm Techtronics who export players and mods worldwide (no, I have no affiliation with them).

They even claim to have supplied NASA with a modded DVD player for use on board the international space station.

"Does this happen elsewhere?"

Yup. Check out UK firm Techtronics who export players and mods worldwide (no, I have no affiliation with them).

They even claim to have supplied NASA with a modded DVD player for use on board the international space station.

Graf

I'm sure there are some region free high-end DVD players out there... anyone want to point some out?

Techtronics (A UK company, but ship abroad) take DVD players, high-end or otherwise, chip them to be multi-region (and usually disable Macrovision too), and then resell them.

Lovely.

Also try this site for chips & chipped players. As the previous poster stated, within the EU this is perfectly legal. Most chips remove both region coding & macrovision.

You can order from this company Techtronics. They have mod chips and kits that give you the ability to skip FBI Warnings, change regions, and remove macrovision. They have a nice kit for my Pioneer 525 here, but it's too expensive for the little use it would get for me.

You can order from this company Techtronics. They have mod chips and kits that give you the ability to skip FBI Warnings, change regions, and remove macrovision. They have a nice kit for my Pioneer 525 here, but it's too expensive for the little use it would get for me.

Being a bit of an audiophile, I've tested both the SACD as well as the DVDA [DVD-Audio] and I must admit, I like the DVDA version better. On paper, the specs for DVDA are also much better. Check it out here. There is a DVDA FAQ here

I highly suggest that you check out some of the recordings.... *much* better than standard CD!

.

From the previous link:

...the astronauts' main concerns are video quality and ease of operation...

If astronauts can't figure out how to use a DVD player, the space program is in deep trouble. ;)

The International Space Station has two Sony FX1 DVD players in which region coding has been bypassed.

The DVD players in the ISS should have been Region 8 (in-flight aircraft entertainment and ships). Of course, it's very hard to find Region 8 disks; airlines have to enter into special licensing deals to have them made. But those are the rules. NASA may need a DMCA audit.

Most DVD players are NTSC/PAL/SECAM agnostic- If the region coding allows the disk to be played, the player dumps the signal out to your TV using whatever format it is encoded in.

IOW, if you have a 'no region' DVD disk with PAL content, it still won't play on the average North American NTSC television.

Playing a DVD under MS-Windows to a VGA monitor ignores the encoding, and some DVD decoder cards for PC's (e.g. DXR2 or Hollywood+/DXR3) will convert the signal between PAL and NTSC before output to your TV.

http://www.techtronics.com/uk/shop/87-00-video-sta ndards-ntsc-pal.html

>Any video recording device is required by law to either be affected by the sync signal corruption or to detect it and intentionally degrade the recording quality. Unfortunately, Macrovision has all of the patents on this technique, which means that you must license it from them if you want to comply with the law.

The own the patent on Automatic Gain Control?

Nahhh. I find that difficult to believe.

Here's a link or two you'd be interested in. This isn't patented by Macrovision, and never can be. Oh, and the best part is it has uses other than for duplicating copy protected movies so it will (probably) never be illegal.

Taken from a msgeek article:

"Call the MPAA thought police! :P NASA is technically in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act!
According to this site, NASA paid a region-hacking company in the UK for two hacked Sony FX-1 DVD players. This is technically illegal under the terms of the DMCA, as it thwarts a content-restriction scheme.
It could be argued that the ISS is an international zone beyond the reach of US law and therefore DMCA doesn't apply. But NASA is a United States government agency and is bound by the DMCA.
I look forward to what may happen if the MPAA decides to play hardball with NASA. This sounds like a terrific case to test the (un)constitutionality of the DMCA...bwahahaha!!! "

Because they have astronauts from many different countries wanting to play DVD's, NASA actually sent two hacked DVD players with region codes disabled to the space station.

They are using several (5 I think) Sony DVD portable players up there. They have been hacked to be region free. See here for an article on how they were modified for space flight.

As many people are finding with RCE, there are mod chips and mod chips. As different players control their features differently, adding all these extras is easier on some than others. I don't know a place that disables the feature lockout on the Pioneer 525, but this is available on some players - check the Sony 735 for example of their 'skip FBI warning' feature.

You mean Techtronics at http://www.techtronics.com (an excellent company - they moded my Pioneer DVD for me and it plays all regions nicely).
They've got full details on their site (as you mentioned) at http://www.techtronics.com/uk/shop/510-nasa.html.

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You mean Techtronics at http://www.techtronics.com (an excellent company - they moded my Pioneer DVD for me and it plays all regions nicely).
They've got full details on their site (as you mentioned) at http://www.techtronics.com/uk/shop/510-nasa.html.

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The discs are the same discs as the ones regularly sold in stores. It appears that most of them are region 1.

Ha! Thanks, dude, I have found this link on techtronics.com, and it looks like they really got Multi-fucking-Region players up there! This made my day, folkz! For one moment I thought it'll be Region 8 or something, but since they needed something that will play Region 5, too, they got themselves tvo nice portable multi region players.

here
hmm Illegal under the DMCA but NASA does it? HMmm I hope the MPAA sues them just cuz it will make news and rile some people up =]

Techtronics is another one. Bought my DVD player from them, with no problems (besides Pioneer's lame connector which can't hold the display board tight, that is :)
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1) Disable Macrovision
2) Be set to any region (to circumvent the new RCE technology
3) Play MP3s and VCDs (not an essential feature, but would be great
3) Ignore User Prohibitions

What is a user prohibition? It's what keeps you from skipping the FBI Warning or the four minutes of commercials at the beginning of your DVD. Call me retentive, but I like immediate access to my DVDs and some DVDs (like my anime DVDs) have tons of companies involved in the production that need you to watch their really flashy logo on the screen. technology.

So far, I've only been able to find one merchant that sells players that ignore User Prohibitions, and they're in the UK.

Does anyone know of any US merchants who sell them?

• 1) I waited over 5 weeks for them to deliver the product.
• 2) when I posted a complaint to their webpage after this time I got rather unexpected results:
  • I didn't get a reply
  • The complaint never got posted to their website
  • All access from my providers IP addresses to their website was blocked.
  • All access to their mailserver with sender address in my domain was blocked. Just try sending an email to webmaster@techtronics.com with any sime.com sender adddress if you want to check it.
  • OK, so I sent them a query from a different IP range - guess what, THAT IP range is now blocked as well. Unnecessary to state that I didn't get any reply, is it?
  • currently they seem to block at least:
  • 2 Distinct IP blocks for different ISPs
  • all email from my domain
  • all email with my name, regardless of domain

3)While I did finaly get the ordered chip after 6 weeks, my credit card was charged twice. For some harmless fun, go to their website click the "order tracking" link (or klick here and post a comment regarding their policy of just blocking access for complaining customers instead of answering. Just se how long it takes befor your access is blocked as well. Conclusion: Be aware that doing business with this company may lead to serious aggavation and unexpected results !Caveat Emptor!

• 1) I waited over 5 weeks for them to deliver the product.
• 2) when I posted a complaint to their webpage after this time I got rather unexpected results:
  • I didn't get a reply
  • The complaint never got posted to their website
  • All access from my providers IP addresses to their website was blocked.
  • All access to their mailserver with sender address in my domain was blocked. Just try sending an email to webmaster@techtronics.com with any sime.com sender adddress if you want to check it.
  • OK, so I sent them a query from a different IP range - guess what, THAT IP range is now blocked as well. Unnecessary to state that I didn't get any reply, is it?
  • currently they seem to block at least:
  • 2 Distinct IP blocks for different ISPs
  • all email from my domain
  • all email with my name, regardless of domain

3)While I did finaly get the ordered chip after 6 weeks, my credit card was charged twice. For some harmless fun, go to their website click the "order tracking" link (or klick here and post a comment regarding their policy of just blocking access for complaining customers instead of answering. Just se how long it takes befor your access is blocked as well. Conclusion: Be aware that doing business with this company may lead to serious aggavation and unexpected results !Caveat Emptor!

Also, Macrovision apparently screws some projectors up as well. Anyway, I got my Pioneer 717 with region coding and macrovision disabled from Techtronics.