Here in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia are some electronic store chains and in between them I've managed to track Blu-ray player offers. So far the three models I've seen, and tested in the store, are Sony BDP-S350, Panasonic BD30, and Samsung BDP-1500. Although all of them are marked region 2 (DVD), all are actually region-free out of the box (as are virtually ALL other DVD-only players for sale here). But for BD, all said models are strictly region B. When asked, salesmen tell me that region-free DVD is not illegal but region-free BD is. (?!?) At least that's what they're told to say.
But I wonder: if, at least, in this part of the world manufacturers are, as it seems, willing to quietly sell region-free DVD players then why not go the whole stretch and do the same with BD? Isn't one (region-free DVD) as illegal as the other (region-free BD)? Or are the penalties different? Or is there a part of the politics I don't know?
I was about to approach this conundrum by buying a region-free mod kit for a Panasonic BD35. But the tally showed the single modded region-free BD player will only be slightly less expensive than getting two separate region A and region B BD players, so the latter is what I did.