Samsung BD-P1500 firmware upgrade

[D-Generate]

I have the above BD player and have done some reading on the firmware upgrades. I have the most current North American firmware upgrade and everything is fine. However, I've been reading that the UK firmware upgrade has Divx support which makes me question, is it worth upgrading my firmware to the UK upgrade. The only questions I would have is, once the UK firmware upgrade has been done, can I still play North American BD's? If not, is there a region code to play with via the UK firmware to make it all regions.

Thanks in advance to all who answer.

D-Gen.

[Krispy Kritter]

It's generally not recommended to use firmware from another region. It also typically won't work, but if it does, then you are confined by the new firmware. In this case, for any current or new Blu-Ray discs with region coding, you'd only be able to play region B discs, not region A. As far as I know, there are no Blu-Ray region hacks for any current players.

[jman98]

The only hacks we've heard of for BluRay players remove DVD, not BluRay, region checking. I agree with Krispy Kritter that it's too risky to try to use UK firmware. There may be significant hardware differences between the players in the UK and North America. Also even if it does work, it may only allow the player to send a PAL signal out, not one converted to NTSC, and your TV may not be able to handle it. Many HDTVs sold in North America cannot display PAL signals. Some can, some can't. Samsung HDTVs cannot.

There are no region free hacks for any current BluRay players. Oppo Digital says that any manufacturer that releases a zone free (BluRay uses zones where DVD uses regions) player will violate their licensing agreement for BluRay. The only zone free BluRay player I've ever seen had an expensive hardware modification not supported by the manufacturer to make it zone free. Finally, note that Samsung has region locked all of their currently available DVD players in the world, so the odds of you being able to undo region or zone checking on your player are extremely low.