Region-free Blu-Ray at last! (1 Viewer)

[John H Ross]

Well it looks as if the first of my two requirements for getting into high-def could be here already. Multi-region BD:

Stegen Electronics

Now all I need is a single format (BD obviously!) and HD could finally be a realistic proposition!

Then again, having just seen Beowolf in 3-D I'm starting to think that 2-D, no matter how good quality, is rather "last century"!

 

[Shane Martin]

Not quite region free. These players play Region A and B BR titles and Region 1 and 2 dvd titles only.

On top of that, I would be really worried that a simple firmware update(which are often required on HD players) as well as BD+ could simply disable the player and turn it into a worthless player.

 

[Carlo_M]

Agreed. If any company offered competing region-free firmware, they would have to be committed to updating it regularly to match the parent company's new firmwares which as Shane stated come out regularly and add new features or fix glitches/incompatibilities.

 

[Sanjay Gupta]

Cees are you reading this? Looks like you may finally be able to go Blu.



Source for Blu-Ray 'region coding' list: WiKipedia. (Shockingly the Official BDA site has no information on Region Coding).

 

[John H Ross]

Indeed it does. And if the 2 priority regions are broken then you can bet the others will follow. Splendid.

 

[Sanjay Gupta]

Actually if you read my 'edited' post above, you might see that there may not even be any incentive or reason for them to try and get this to work with 'Region C'.

 

[Shane Martin]

Yes but then there's BD+.

 

[Sanjay Gupta]

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't BD+ related to copy protection? I don't see how that would have anything to do with 'Region coding'.

 

[Jason Seaver]

BD+ is most often used for an extra layer of copy protection, but could theoretically be used for anything - it's just code that runs on startup. If someone decides to use if for detecting broken region coding, they could.

 

[Shane Martin]

Sanjay,
If the BDA thinks that breaking the region coding is a breach of the players security, they could easily shut it down with BD+. The only player that BD+ doesn't have access to the firmware of the player is the PS3.

 

[Jari K]

I´m quite sure that the "region free" BD-players will arrive at some point. Just like they did with SD DVD players. At the end of the day, only a few studios really support these region codes anyway. Hell, even the PS3 games are now all "R0".