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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?
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"
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...
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.
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.