If your player is multi-region hacked,of course it will play any discs from any region,some will not play properly because of firm ware problem,some will not play because of RCE.But the most important thing of all,is the color system compatibility issue.If your U.S television and DVDplayer have not problem presenting PAL color,you will have a smooth ride.If your hardwares have problems with another color system...you will have to stick to NTSC releases from R2 JAPAN and R3.
I fellow I work with is going to China for 5 months. He was just over there and said he saw DVDs for sale for $1 U.S. He also said some of the DVDs are region free and will work in U.S. players. Is this true and how can you tell them apart? What he suggests is to buy a player in China and when he comes back all he has to do is get a voltage plug to run it here. He also mentioned that he saw movies on sale in China before they were released for sale in the U.S.
I may be sent to China for 6 months this fall, so I have become interested in how this would work.
TED, What PATRICK and JEFF pointed out is correct.Those discs that your friend told you are BOOTLEGS! However,most of the players sold in CHINA market are multi-region players,they are PAL and NTSC friendly.Some players are multi-voltage,so if you bring one of the players back to the STATES you may not really need those voltage converters. In actual fact,CHINA made players are 99% hackable,and multi-region players.And CHINA made players dominates the world's population of more than 75%. In SINGAPORE,almost every brand including PHILIPS,PIONEER,KENWOOD,DENON,MARANTZ,YAMAHA,TOSHI BA,SONY,SHARP,SANYO,TEAC,THOMSON and others are made in CHINA.Except PANASONIC and SAMSUNG...
Yeah, exactly, I've bought that player over a year ago and now 40% of my discs are from other than R1 and Malata played every single one flawlessly, any region, Pal or no Pal, full screen or widescreen, there are 5 video filters, one works better for one kind of video/format, the other for another, progressive, DTS, zoom (constantly use it, all discs are misframed a bit to the left or right, all tvs overscan a LOT, especially mine, some discs like R2 Stargate season 2 volumes are widescreen but start out fullscreen so zoomed in, that only on a widescreen TV you'll see the whole picture and without a zoom function you're stuck. check out AVDeals.com thats where I got mine, they still have it, with new firmware. This is truly a Golden Grail.