All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

[fdm]

Couldn't stand being region locked on blu-ray any more. Taking this thread into consideration, a modified Oppo is arriving at my doorstep today.

Hope it lives up to its reputation. Hope I don't go apeshit importing too many titles. Hope the wife doesn't stay pissed too long.

[Grand Wazoo]

I've been in a heaven with my modified Oppo ever since I was Sherwooded last month. The thing works like a dream and the stress factor of worrying that every disc will be its last has vanished.

[Cash Flagg]

Is anyone else having difficulties with the remote hack for the Insignia player? It takes me a couple of dozen tries before it works, and compounding my frustration, the code ends with the 'enter' button, so I always have to click out of whatever setup function I've unintentionally selected.

[headacheboy]

I'm aching to move out of the Guantanamo that is Region 1 and ready to enter the good life that is No-Region (I'm longing for MoC's Murnau and Lang catalogue and that Mizoguchi box as well as the Naruse set). I've been reading what many people use and I do believe I have decided on this piece of equipment:

PIONEER DV-220V-K 1080p HDMI UPSCALING REGION FREE DVD PLAYER w/ USB Input

Comments? Is it a good, bad, ugly, indifferent or a solid first choice? And am I going to need to get extra things to make it work? I generally buy something, get it home and then realize I forgot something like a cord or batteries or some such nonsense.

[Michael Kerpan]

No clue as to the suitability of the DVD player you mention, but ...

If you have a Windows PC (32-bit version), you can watch (almost all) DVDs from anywhere using a free utility program call DVD For Free (dvd43).

[matrixschmatrix]

I use AnyDVD HD, which lets you watch more or less anything you want (DVD or Blu.) It's pricey, but as usual, there are ways around that.

[headacheboy]

Hey, thanks for the tip about DVD43. I shall investigate immediately.

[Michael Kerpan]

Hey, thanks for the tip about DVD43. I shall investigate immediately.

Look for the old version (3.7, perhaps) -- the new one is apparently very questionable (as is the current dvd43 site).

Perhaps anydvd (costs money) might be a safer bet. Not sure of the current status of VLC under windows (free).

[Drucker]

Writing this question after the PAL discussion in the Toni thread.
Okay. I have an HP Laptop, it should be fine to handle a PAL disc?

I thought about this yesterday. I have a nice blu ray player I don't want to mess with. However, I'm tempted to buy a cheap blu ray player which I plan on unlocking. Not sure how to yet do that, but I think I could learn (and sure the internet would have answers). Flipping through the MoC catalog just makes me very tempted to do so...and I can only imagine what I'll find when looking for Australian discs.

Does this seem like a good idea? Anyone else do something like this?

[zedz]

If you're going down the path of having two players, you could also consider the option of purchasing a decent cheap Zone B player (which will play UK and Australian discs) and leaving it locked. From the reports on the forum it seems to me that a lot of the cheap region-free players have some serious performance and reliability issues, and you might be able to find a much better quality player for the same price (or less) if you simply get a dedicated Zone B one from amazon.uk or somewhere.

Has anybody here actually done this?

[Michael Kerpan]

Has anybody here actually done this?

Amazon UK (or Germany or France, etc.) won't ship electronic gear to the US. I had the same idea -- but could never figure out a way to actually get a Euro-B player for a reasonable price (short of going to Europe, buying one and then trying to get it back through customs without paying a huge import duty).

[matrixschmatrix]

Has anyone tried picking on up off of say ebay uk?

[Drucker]

Has anybody here actually done this?

Amazon UK (or Germany or France, etc.) won't ship electronic gear to the US. I had the same idea -- but could never figure out a way to actually get a Euro-B player for a reasonable price (short of going to Europe, buying one and then trying to get it back through customs without paying a huge import duty).

Whoa seriously? Nobody has been able to find a way around this? That's crazy!

[Paupau]

I personally have two players, a native B and a native B Philips BDP3000 that I then flashed to make it region A. Works like a charm, for 2 years I was going insane for not being able to buy CC's. Spent less than €200 for both players.

Surely there's a player to flash from A to B.

[Michael Kerpan]

I wound up going with a Sherwood -- which I leave permanently in region B mode (and use only for Region B BRDs). I use my Samsung BDP-1600 only for region A BRDS and streaming (the latter is a brand new thing for us). I still use my Oppo DVD player for all DVDs (from all regions). I hope using the Sherwood as little as possible will help encourage to survive as long as possible (though my first one had to be replaced by Sherwood after 5 months).

[manicsounds]

It is possible through ebay (i took a chance with it and luckily without problems), but yeah, no electronics etailers ship abroad, unless you count the places that sell region free players....

[rwaits]

Very ignorant question, but I've determined (after my SECOND Sherwood recently crapped out on me) that getting a native B player is probably the way to go for me. IF I can figure out how to get one shipped to U.S., what, if anything else will I need? This will not plug directly into my wall, correct? Will I need a currency converter of some sort? Thanks.

[Michael Kerpan]

You need a player that can convert PAL to NTSC (unless you have a multi-standard TV) -- probably not too hard to find. Then you can look for a player that has a dual power supply. If you find one of theses, all yyou will need is the proper plug adapter from Radio Shack (or such like).

[effigy105]

Hi all,

I've looked through a lot of this thread, and a few others, but I'm still unsure of what the best course of action might be regarding upgrading my current Blu-Ray player (other than, "Buy an Oppo!").

To give some background, and forgive my ignorance should I expose its full breadth, I'm originally from Europe but I'm currently residing in the USA. I must admit it never even occurred to me, since I was buying a 1080p LCD television, that displaying PAL would be an issue. I thought that was done away with with the advent of HD. Maybe it was and I'm just missing something. In any case, I cannot get my Samsung LCD television to display a PAL encoded DVD.

This only became evident to me when I bought my Sherwood BDP-5004 about 1 1/2 years ago. It's region-free all right, and for that I'm grateful, but should I ever try and play a PAL DVD, my television states that the mode is not supported. I've fiddled with every setting I could but I'm guessing the Sherwood cannot convert PAL to NTSC and output it that way. I once even switched the Sherwood to PAL and then had to navigate blindly using the remote to change the settings back because the TV could display nothing.

So I use my laptop, run through the television with a VGA cable (how quaint, I know), to play PAL DVDs. Meanwhile the Sherwood interrupts most every Blu-Ray with one to two second long pauses where the entire film locks up. Usually it only does this once every twenty minutes or so but when I was watching MoC's disc of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? it was locking up every five to ten minutes. It's rather annoying. On top of that the Sherwood failed to run some American discs (Disney's Ponyo Blu-Ray and Criterion's original Black Narcissus DVD) which makes me glad I have an American PS3 on hand too.

So I want to upgrade and I'm wondering what to do. I wouldn't mind shelling out for a hacked Oppo BDP-93 if I knew it was long-term reliable, I could still count on some customer service, and if I knew it could allow me to watch PAL DVDs (and supplements on Blu-Rays) on my current television. Similarly, a hacked Oppo BDP-83 would be cheaper, and I have no interest in 3D, but since that unit is discontinued I wonder if I'd find myself being caught out with newer Blu-Ray releases. I was also looking at the Sharp BD-HP24 as a possible, much cheaper alternative. I'm something of a DVD/Blu-Ray collector and if the Oppo really does excel at HD representation and upscaling DVDs then the extra money would be well spent (I must say some stuff has looked fabulous, noticeably better than the PS3, through the Sherwood).

I know it'd probably be cheaper to buy these machines from the factory and install the hardware to unlock them myself but, well, I'm just the sort of person who could screw that up.

Any advice, suggestions, recommendations, should-haves and would-haves would be most welcome.

[David M.]

The Oppo is your best bet here because of its frame rate conversion mode.

For Progressive PAL contents, the conversion is decent. It will probably produce a lot of stuttering with video material (video camera based TV shows, bonus features, etc.) In any case the result will be inferior to a display that can natively show 50hz. I would import the equivalent model from Europe if I was in your case - or find a US based TV which can reproduce 50hz (good luck...)

I'm something of a DVD/Blu-Ray collector and if the Oppo really does excel at HD representation and upscaling DVDs then the extra money would be well spent (I must say some stuff has looked fabulous, noticeably better than the PS3, through the Sherwood).

That's interesting, I'm not sure what the Sherwood would be doing to mess up the quality. With BD it's actually harder to design a player that does this; it's easier to just get it right and leave the image alone. For that matter, the few bad players are ones which have misguided attempts at "improving" the quality (Samsung players try to reduce film grain, for example - avoid).

With 1080p/24 BDs (that's just about all of them), it's not the case that a better player will = better picture quality. Cheap players can reproduce what's stored on the disc perfectly well (that includes the PS3). If there is an issue with BD quality, it's because the player is designed so poorly that it's mangling what's encoded on the disc, which is rare.

[effigy105]

The Oppo is your best bet here because of its frame rate conversion mode.

For Progressive PAL contents, the conversion is decent. It will probably produce a lot of stuttering with video material (video camera based TV shows, bonus features, etc.) In any case the result will be inferior to a display that can natively show 50hz. I would import the equivalent model from Europe if I was in your case - or find a US based TV which can reproduce 50hz (good luck...)

Thanks for your advice David. I'm not sure if I can afford to track down a new monitor, as much as I might like to. My stay in the US is somewhat temporary anyway so a half-measure would tide me over just fine for now. All things going according to plan my next television will be bought in PAL-land .

That's interesting, I'm not sure what the Sherwood would be doing to mess up the quality. With BD it's actually harder to design a player that does this; it's easier to just get it right and leave the image alone. For that matter, the few bad players are ones which have misguided attempts at "improving" the quality (Samsung players try to reduce film grain, for example - avoid).

With 1080p/24 BDs (that's just about all of them), it's not the case that a better player will = better picture quality. Cheap players can reproduce what's stored on the disc perfectly well (that includes the PS3). If there is an issue with BD quality, it's because the player is designed so poorly that it's mangling what's encoded on the disc, which is rare.

I didn't mean to imply the Sherwood is messing up image quality, quite the opposite. It may just be my imagination, I can't claim any great expertise in this area, but I thought a few Blu-Rays and DVDs I ran through the Sherwood looked noticeably (slight, but noticeably) better than they did with the PS3. That may simply have been a case of my having the settings more adequately attuned on one system than on the other at the time too.

I own a large collection of DVDs and I guess I'd just like to equip myself with the best equipment I can for keeping it looking good in the future. I've been impressed with the upscaling offered by the Sherwood so I'm just wondering if Oppo offer even more improvement. I'm not much of a tech-head when it comes to these things so perhaps my expectations are missplaced. At this point I'd just be happy with a multi-region capable Blu-Ray player that doesn't insert pauses into every film I watch.

[manicsounds]

Sherwood not converting PAL to NTSC? Are you sure?

If you set your Sherwood to "PAL", then of course you'll get nothing on a US TV.
Set your Sherwood to "NTSC" and it will covert the PAL signal to NTSC. Doesn't that work?

[effigy105]

Sherwood not converting PAL to NTSC? Are you sure?

If you set your Sherwood to "PAL", then of course you'll get nothing on a US TV.
Set your Sherwood to "NTSC" and it will covert the PAL signal to NTSC. Doesn't that work?

As far as I can tell, it won't for me. The Sherwood system menu simply asks if your TV is NTSC or PAL. It also lists a series of Resolutions once a TV type is selected: HDMI Auto (my current setting), 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p, and 480i.

I recall when I first got the thing I played with every option I could but to no avail. Just to rekindle my sense of failure, I just popped MoC's DVDs of La signora di tutti and There's Always Tomorrow in and was greeted with a 'Mode Not Supported' message each time.

Unless it's specifically the television that's the culprit, I can't think of anything else to try with the player.

[Drucker]

Sorry if this has been answered before, but do laptops/computers tend to be region free?

[Michael Kerpan]

Sorry if this has been answered before, but do laptops/computers tend to be region free?

No. However there is software that allows you to play _most_ DVDs -- some of this software is free. (If you check out VLC -- be sure to get this ONLT from the official site -- as there are some spyware-infected versions being offered by shady download sites).