lyssie: (hell)
lyssie ([personal profile] lyssie) wrote2004-03-08 11:09 am

Fucking encoding regions.

I loathe regions. I think they're an outdated, fucking waste of crap. There's no reason for them except to keep fun things from the American population, and vice versa (although, in some respects, I suppose it's a good thing shit like Survivor isn't available in r2).

Blake's 7 is finally out on dvd, but I won't ever be able to watch it. Episodes I haven't seen in nearly 10 years, and I can't see them because they couldn't simply put out a regionless dvd.

Or they couldn't simply do regionless dvd to start with.

Gah.

I need to blow up some things.
elsaf: (Default)

[personal profile] elsaf 2004-03-08 09:21 am (UTC)(link)
An inexpensive solution:

http://www.compuplus.com/insidepage.php3?sid=81488hn0edu8ccj&id=952

It costs $25 to put a DVD drive in you desktop computer. Computer DVD drives can be set to any region -- five times. After the fifth change, it won't change anymore. (There are ways around even that, but let's keep this solution "off the rack.")

You set your computer DVD drive to R2. You keep your R1 standalone player. Voila! You can watch R1 and R2. I'm going to assume here that you have no need for R3-whatever.

[identity profile] ravenevermore.livejournal.com 2004-03-08 09:30 am (UTC)(link)
Also there are any number of soft/firmware solutions to make PC dvd drives completely regionless.
Alternatively ebay off your current dvd player and buy the cheapest region free one...
Regions do suck, and sadly it appears its a lot more easy to get a regionless dvd player in the UK than the US....
wish there was a solution to that, but sadly power supply differences prevent me from sending you one of our cheap n cheerful solutions... :(
elsaf: (Default)

[personal profile] elsaf 2004-03-08 09:41 am (UTC)(link)
Most of the region free players I've seen will work on either UK or US current. It takes a 75-cent adapter to stick on the plug to make it fit a US socket.

The sticking point is NTSC/PAL format. However, an awful lot of region-free players will do the conversion internally and play on either type of TV.

Region-free players are available here. Last time I checked, they were running $150-$180.

[identity profile] kiri-l.livejournal.com 2004-03-08 10:38 am (UTC)(link)
you need a region free player. one that plays anything and everything (including mp3s..)

*wanders over to tv area* May I suggest the following JVC options.

The JVC XV-N50BK (http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?modelId=MODL027033) less pricey.. all the fun features.

My Model the JVC XV-NA70BK (http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?modelId=MODL027118)

I should like to say the Robson and Firefly both look *EXCELLENT* on this. =) [I rented a robson dvd a while back)

Now I notice that several people have mentioned addng a DVD player to your computer. While this is nice - I for one don't find playing DVD's on the puter as satisfying and sitting several feet away from the tv and muching a bit of popcorn. =) Call me old fashioned.

Hope that helps. =)

[identity profile] drake57.livejournal.com 2004-03-08 12:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Ana if you don't mind vhs quality i can burn B7 to DVD for you.
And yes region encoding was forced on us by the movie studios so we in Region 1 can't get movies on DVD before they relased them here.