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Emigrating DVD's?
RenHoek asks: "I found the love of my life on the internet, and I'm about to emigrate from the Netherlands to the USA. This leaves me with a big problem. My carefully collected DVD's are region 2 (Europe) and the USA is region 1. So except for buying a new DVD player (220 volts in Europe, 110 in the USA) does this also mean I have to sell my entire DVD collection here, and try to buy everything together in the US? It would seem I have a legal right to watch my legally bought DVDs, but region locking prohibits this, and circumventing region locking carries stiff penalties. Emailing the MPAA resulted in deafening silence. So what does the slashdot community advise? Should I follow the new American dream and start suing the moment I enter the US for the fact that the MPAA is either taking away my rights, or forcing me into a DMCA crime?" Thank god there are regionless DVD players! For those who don't know about them, which ones do you recommend and where are
the best places to buy them?
I've easily found regionless hacked versions of Apple's DVD player software online. While I haven't used one myself, all reports point to the regionless part of the equation working while the playback quality depends on hardware/software version.
If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
You could, but then you have to worry about PAL vs. NTSC as well.
---- Just another spud server.
There's several hacks available to make it play DVD's from anywhere. There's one built into the hardware of some of them as illustrated here, or you can buy a disc to do it like this.
- Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
If you're lucky enough to find one of the original run of this Apex player, you can disable region coding altogether. Mine plays every R1 and R2 disc I've tossed into it.
My understanding is that having a region-free player is only half the battle... an R2 disc in PAL format won't play back on a region-free NTSC machine, but this Apex automatically senses and converts between the two formats. My one R2 PAL disc (Citizen Kane) plays fine on my NTSC television (and I would assume the reverse holds true as well) so you wouldn't have to jettison your current collection.
Quality-wise, the machine looks a little cheesy, but the picture is great, it has component video and DTS/SPDIF audio out, and all the features you could want. Best of all, it uses a standard IDE DVD-ROM drive, so all the moving parts that are likely to go bad can be replaced on the cheap.
You can also turn off Macrovision via the secret menu, but I've yet to feel the urge to make a VHS copy of any of my DVDs.
I don't experience any problems when playing off these NTSC-DVDs, so I guess the player has some sort of built in conversion-system.
My understanding is (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) but the actual image data on a DVD is system independent. Nothing is encoded on the DVD as NTSC or PAL or SECAM. Its the player itself that takes the MPEG stream and converts it to the appropriate signal, thus the reason for region encoding in the first place. Back with VCRs the movie studios had market seperation because the "data" on a tape is tied to the system its recorded in. This all goes away with DVDs (and is IMO one of its strengths) but, of course, removed the barriers between each of the TV systems. Region encoding is a way of artifically keeping those barriers up.
I feel the orig poster's pain. I'm heading back from the UK tomorrow and I've purchased a few Region 2 DVDs that you cannot get in Region 1 versions (Billy Conelly vids). The new iBook's DVD-ROM drive gets a firmware update when I get home to make it region free.
Technically speaking it's not "PAL", but it is 720x576 at 25 frames per second rather than 720x480 at 29.976 frames per second. Depending on the player, it may or may not be able to output PAL-ish data as NTSC. If not, he can just bring his TV with him or look around for a multi-system set (or just use his computer).
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
Get a computer DVD drive made before Jan 1, 2000. You'll have to get it used, of course, but I got mine from a Dell Optiplex PII-450. The key thing here is that it must be RPC-1.
Then, install Linux on the computer with the drive, and use XINE or XMPS or any other fine DVD playing software, none of which care about region codes. Just plug and play! You can even get a video card with TV out and watch it on your normal movie viewing device.
As far as I can tell, Malata is the king of codefree DVD players. The N996 is completely region-free, is progressive scan, has a built-in PAL-NTSC converter (and vice-versa), built in Dolby Digital decoder, and is tweakable beyond belief. On the other hand, I recently bought a Philips 712 that is remotely hackable (like the legendary Apex) for $179, and am quite happy with it. Check out www.dvd.reviewer.co.uk for lots of good info.
It's called RCE (Region Coding Enhancement). The DVD FAQ has some information, as does DVD Talk.
It's now region free, and the hack had the added the benefit of removing macrovision. Not bad.
The player plays pretty much anything (DVD, VCD, SVCD, MP3, CDR/RW), and also does NTSC/PAL conversion. Not bad for a unit I picked up for $80 US.
Well, you are technically correct, but most people refer to the European PAL standard when talking about that. That is, 625 lines 25 fps. Most american TVs do not support that resolution, and most TVs do not have RGB input. Also, most DVDs do not have the RGB outputs. So, in practice, people are stuck, unless they want to pay for the very expensive systems.
Obviously, nothing prevents countries like Brazil of using the european color scheme ( PAL ) with the american TV standard ( M ), thereby creating their "own" incompatible system...