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Emigrating DVD's?

Posted by Cliff on from the regionless-DVD-players dept.

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?

2 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Re:DVD on Mac by Howie · · Score: 5, Informative

    For Windows, DVD Genie is the answer for most software solutions, including the popular WinDVD, and PowerDVD, and Remote Selector does the same for the Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus (aka VideoLogic DVD Player), and Creative's DXR2/3 amongst other hardware decoders.

    I've used both with great results playing Region 1 disks on my (theoretically) Region 2 PCs.

    --
    "don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
  2. APEX by yolto · · Score: 4, Informative
    I recently found the need for a region free player (mostly to import stuff from Europe/Japan). I wanted something cheap that would play a variety of formats. Did a little research, and came across the APEX AD-1500. APEX players have a long history of being region-hackable, but many of the older units are difficult to find. I purchased an AD-1500 from Circuit City (you can also get it at Amazon.com), then applied the hack I found here

    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.