My first non-R1 DVD! (1 Viewer)

[Scott Leopold]

Last year, as my wife's pregnancy advanced, she suffered from terrible swelling, and ended up out of work, having to spend most of her time in bed to help relieve her condition. To ease her uncomfortable situation, I purchased a DVD player for the bedroom. At the time, I didn't think much of the player (even though it performed much better than the PS2 in the family room), and was even bashed by some self-proclaimed HT elitists for buying such a cheap machine. I recently found out that my humble, little Apex 3201 had some hidden features, and was quite pleased to find how easy they were to access. Through Ebay, I eagerly acquired my first non-R1 DVD, Tales of the Unusual. It arrived Monday (after being shipped from HK on Friday), and we watched it last night! I was thrilled, not only because the movie was great, but because the player worked perfectly. I'm looking forward to uncovering more regional treasures, and will be checking out a local Asian Video store today in the hopes of finding some in stock there. It's quite a pleasant feeling, being free from the restrictions of the regional coding.

 

[Jens Raethel]

Yes, region free players are great!
I live in Sweden but I only buy regin 1 DVD´s!
Thatway I often have the movie on DVD before it even has been shown on our theaters!

 

[MartEvans]

My little Apex 1500 is a god send, even though it's not the hottest player around (by hot I mean performance not temperature although I swear at times I could fry eggs on it) but for my needs it perfect... I'm from the UK but live in the US and it allows me to keep up on all kinds of stuff that I'd otherwise miss. My only gripe is that if the disc is anamorphic w/s then it does some kind of stretch thing which is a bit of a drag. I've been looking at a Malata which I understand does a great job of the PAL to NTSC conversion.

 

[Yee-Ming]

ironic that non-US residents sometimes get the best of both worlds?
I'm in Singapore. practically all DVD players sold here are "region-free", case in point my own Pioneer 535 -- although "officially" they are region 3, in practice the store selling it will have had the firmware replaced, and (here at least) it does not affect your warranty.
so I just ship in R1 discs from Amazon (or whoever), R2 discs from Amazon UK, R4 from Ezydvd. or just walk into the store and buy R1 off the shelf -- curiously most shops sell R1 discs, with some R3. once in a while I'll actually buy R3 to this day I think I have a grand total of 1 R3 title, out of 200+ (haven't been keeping count).
and to support this, most TVs sold here are multi-system (i.e. both PAL & NTSC), e.g. my Sony KV-ES29M61. so we don't even have to worry about conversion.

 

[Darren Lewis]

One of the best things I did with my Home Cinema was to go multi-region. I've got a "chipped" Pioneer 545 and it's a little beauty.

I usually hunt around the reviews to see which region has the best pic/sound/feature and buy that one. There are some great region comparision sites out there.

 

[Robert Spalding]

the best region comparison site is Rewind DVD:
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