I've got a Toshiba BluRay player that whilst "basic" (ie lacking in fluff like wifi or Netflix etc) is extremely good at what it does and it cost about $50. By downloading Toshiba's own Australian latest upgrade software, it;s possible to access the factory settings and it lets you set it to any DVD and any BluRay region you like
It's true though that BluRay multiregion (or more often, being able to switch the region as desired, since BD doesn't have DVD's 'region free' 0 setting) is usually much more difficult and in quite a numbe rof models requires modification to the hardware.
So if you want a specific manufacturer the only recourse is to go to a specialist store and buy a modified player - these sometimes have multiple copies of the player's operating system onboard, so the player can autoswitch and the 'multiregion' ability is able to survive ay updates the manufacturer puts out.
Another solution is to simply import a second player from the desired region and have two - often cheaper than the modified ones, guaranteed to work and survive any update. And it halves the wear on the player too. Of course, you need a voltage transformer usually but they are cheap.
I simply don;t understand why folks who will drop up to $25 on a disc deny themselves access to the expanded range of titles that comes with being able to play discs outside of their own region.
I do recognise though, that multiregion is more common outside of the USA than within it. That is because the US is home to region-1, which has the largest selection of titles - espescially niche ones, by virtue of it;s being the single largest consumer base and also probably the largest single rights area.
Europe (plus Japan) has more consumers by far, but it;s a market fragmented by different languages and rights divided across individual national boundaries.
Certainly here in the UK multi-region is very common indeed and many consumers have it. Virtually every online store has a selection of such players and so do some highstreet ones - for DVD anyway.
For BluRay, that is the domain of specialists - as it was in the first few years of DVD. However, it's also true to say that the BluRay catalogue is different in nature; the latest movies don;t trail months behind the US these days (in theatres or on disc). Also, many BD discs are not even region coded at all.
