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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?
Couldn't you use your old DVD player with a voltage converter? Admittedly, it's a bit of a kludge, since you'll need a new player to play US bought DVDs, but it should tide you over in the meantime. Radio Shack sells plenty of them for less than $40.
evanchik.net
How would I know, I don't know about them, right?
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"
Be wary of getting a 'region-free' DVD player, as opposed to a region-switchable one. I seem to recall that some recent discs have a slightly different region-check that doesn't like region-free players, but is fine if you have a player that can be set to the correct region.
Wish I could remember what it was called, but I think Gladiator and some versions of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon were the two movies mentioned at the time.
That said, I have a region-free DVD player (Wharfdale DVD-750) and I've yet to come across a problem disc (apart from some VideoCDs, but that's another story).
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
you've have the entire Slashdot Crowd behind you
That, or it'll be the far more serious charge of conspiracy to deprive Walt Disney's frozen head of his rightful cash cow.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
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
I don't know about Dutch law, but in the US I don't see any reason why you have a legal right to watch DVDs in a different region. In general, there seems to be a lot of confusion about what "fair use" entails -- it frees you from liability if you do certain things that might otherwise constitute infringement, but it doesn't create any responsibility for the copyright holder to enable you to do anything.
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?
RenHoek, I think you'll fit in well in our country! Hopefully, someone will have a legal solution for you. If not, if I were in your position, I'd use a mod or whatever illegal circumvention you had in mind, on the principle that it's a violation of the letter but not the spirit of the law in this case. Despite the hysterical, paranoid ravings you read here, you won't be facing any "severe penalties" if you're a user, not a mod reseller or a large-scale pirate.
Besides, now that you're in a relationship, you won't be watching your beloved collection much anyway. Brace yourself for a lot of Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts and *gag* Hugh Grant.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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.
The site vcdhelp.com is a good site that lists just about every dvd player with it's ability to play stuff from different regions. Just about every player has a "region hack" that allows a different region to be selected.
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.
However, I also recently bought a local DVD player because of all the local DVDs I've wanted to buy or rent, but couldn't see because they were not only region-2 encoded, but because they are in PAL format and my DVD/LP player is NTSC-only.
My advice would be to do the same in reverse for your situation -- buy a DVD player in the Netherlands or the UK that can either accept a region mod or is already region switchable. Make sure that it can output both NTSC and PAL format, because TVs in the US are NTSC-only. If you can't get a European DVD player that can output both NTSC and PAL, then you'll need to get a European TV that can handle both NTSC and PAL input that you take with you (with any luck, your existing TV will be able to handle both NTSC and PAL input).
Just keep in mind that you'll probably need a 240VAC@50Hz/120VAC@60Hz voltage/frequency converter to handle any European video equipment that you bring over with you. Make sure you get a high-quality model, not one that does only the voltage side and skips the the frequency conversion part, because that will be likely to fry your sensitive eletronic equipment. I've found good ones over here in Belgium (they tend to work both ways), but they are hard to find and expensive.
Brad Knowles
http://daily.daemonnews.org/ -- if you're not
I got a DVD player for christmas, and of course picked one that made changing the regions very easy. So far, I highly recomend the Daewoo 9000n. Dolby 5.1 decoding on board, progressive scan composite out, digital audio out, and user upgradable firmware. The one thing I havn't tested is PAL on NTSC, and havn't heard any reports for or against. For $150 on amazon, it's the best deal around as far as I'm concerned. Once you get over the legal issues involved, head ove to http://www.nerd-out.com/forum/ for all the information on picking out a DVD player and how to upgrade it.
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 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.