Question on Region Coding (1 Viewer)

[CalvinC]

Please excuse the ignorance here but I need to ask a question about region coding. I have a Toshiba 2109 DVD player. I know that it plays region 1 dvd's but will it play dvd's with other region coding such as region 2? If not, can it be fixed to play region 2 or will I have to buy a dvd player with that capability? Will a brick and mortar store sell the DVD players capable of playing all regions? Thanks for any input!

 

[Ken Seeber]

The short answer is no.
Regular off-the-shelf DVD players sold in this country are designed to play Region 1 DVDs only. That's the whole point of the system, to make sure you can only play Region 1 software.
Most players these days are difficult to modify. Not only do you have the region coding issue itself, most Region 2 DVDs are in the PAL video standard, not the NTSC used in North America. You need a player that is not only multi-region, but does PAL-to-NTSC conversion.
There are outboard converters, but they are expensive. You'd be better off getting a player like the Malata, which is multi-region and does near-perfect conversion.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

I have a 110 volt 2109, modified to play all regions. Since 230 volts is what we use here, I'm assuming it is imported from the states originally.
However, region coding modification is something that is much bigger outside of region 1, so you are probably better off going with a Malata, as Ken states.
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/Kimmo

 

[Steve_Ch]

Just one word of caution, unless you are "into" keeping up with various developmenet, it may be more trouble than just "fixing" or buying an all region player. There is a bit of an "arms race" going on that the movie industry keep coming up with schemes that defeats all region players. Now, no scheme is unbreakable, but you may find that you have to periodically update your player's firmware so it will work with the latest DVD scheme. Again, if you don't mind this stuff, it's perfectly fine, but if you are a casual user, this may be a little more involve than you would like. There are some pretty good write ups on the whole region code business, sites such as DVD demystified or DVDTalk are good places to look.