Why doesn't the Samsung BD-P1620 region switch work?

[gah]

I have a used region 2/B Blu-Ray player called Samsung BD-P1620. I've been searching for a way to unlock it, and I keep finding the same instructions:
Turn it on, open tray, close tray, wait for "no-disc" message, hit "repeat" and then punch in "57538" and it should ask for a region number (to which responding "9" should do the trick).
Problem is, nothing happens after I punch in "57538". It doesn't ask for anything.
I tried updating the firmware. That didn't help.
I looked around a bit more to find that some people had the same problem with the similar model BD-P1600, to which the solution was to download the US firmware and edit it in a hex editor. So I figured that might be worth trying with the 1620. Which is of course impossible because there is no US firmware listed for the 1620. Apparently the 1620 was only released in Europe or something (please correct me if I'm wrong), and I'm assuming it won't run on the BD-P1600 firmware (please correct me if anyone has tried this with any success).

Does anybody know anything about how to get the region lock off this thing, with the updated firmware? Or even change it to region 1/A? Or revert it to factory firmware? Or does anyone have region free or 1/A firmware that works for the BD-P1620?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out.

[hech54]

You are not going to change the Blu Ray "zone".

[gah]

You are not going to change the Blu Ray "zone".

Well, that sucks. But what about the DVD region? Most of my DVD's are region 1 (because PAL is evil). Am I pretty much screwed there too?

[hech54]

There are VERY FEW hackable Blu Ray players.....but if a hack does exist for one it almost always involves DVD regions only.

[jman98]

Samsung and Sony players of all kinds are essentially impossible to unlock - period. A few models sold in Australia can be unlocked for DVD playback, but that is all.

You may actually need to DOWNGRADE the firmware to get that hack to work that you read about. If you can even find which version it supposedly worked on and if the firmware still exists. And that assumes that you even can downgrade the firmware. Some machines will not ever let you do this.

Applying a firmware not for your model can be a fantastic way to brick your player. And as US firmwares almost never support region free anything, this is a bad idea for multiple reasons. I cannot recommend this, but if you get desperate enough to try a US firmware, understand that if your player gets bricked that Samsung will very likely tell you "Shouldn't have done that. Sucks to be you. We'll fix it but you'll have to pay for it because you voided your warranty when you did that."

You need to research BluRay players that can be made region free BEFORE you buy. Various European online stores sell them, but I have no personal recommendations to make except avoid Sony and Samsung.

[gah]

I guess I should just look into getting an American player that won't explode if plugged into a European wall. It's not like I intend to ever buy a Zone B blu-ray movie anyway.

[FulciLives]

Well, that sucks. But what about the DVD region? Most of my DVD's are region 1 (because PAL is evil). Am I pretty much screwed there too?

The cold war is over now that we have HDTV and Blu-Ray etc. but yes I never liked the old evil empire of PAL either LOL

[jman98]

I guess I should just look into getting an American player that won't explode if plugged into a European wall. It's not like I intend to ever buy a Zone B blu-ray movie anyway.

Be warned - most American players are incapable of region free play any more, should you care.

Philips still makes DVD players, even a few in America, that can be made region free. However, another warning is that once you get a player to be region free, do NOT ever update the firmware or you will very likely permanently break region free playback.

[FulciLives]

This takes time and there is a (small) cost associated with it but if you rip a DVD and then burn it back to a blank the new DVD will still be NTSC or PAL (as per the original) but it will now be region free. Single layer blanks are cheap enough that this could be a good work around and although dual layer blanks cost more they are still cheap. However it only solves the region coding. Like I said the format will still be either NTSC or PAL (whatever the original is).

This trick also works with Blu-Ray discs but of course you have to have a Blu-Ray burner and blank Blu-Ray discs but it is one way of getting past the region coding issue. I know one guy in the USA who has bought some import Blu-Ray movies that were region locked so they wouldn't play on a standard USA made Blu-Ray player and he just ripped them and made a copy and it plays fine.

[hech54]

but yes I never liked the old evil empire of PAL either LOL

Is that why they call it the "Everywhere But America" format?.

[gah]

he just ripped them and made a copy and it plays fine.

And how would one go about doing this? Some blu-rays seem to be so heavily copy protected that not even AnyDVDHD can get around it to read the disc. Case in point, Kick-Ass (3-disc combo pack). It comes with a digital copy and a DVD, but some idiot thought it'd be sufficient to only put the bonus materials on the blu-ray. It's possible I may have permanently ruined the disc trying to get it to work, just by sheer amount of spinning in the drive.

[FulciLives]

Well he lives in America and primarily buys American Blu-Ray discs. Yes he buys imported Blu-Ray discs but many are not region coded. So really he only has to do the trick (rip it and burn it to make it region free) when it is an import that has region coding. He has a lot like that but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the bulk of what he buys. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that he has yet to find one that he cannot rip and copy properly.

I suppose if you are outside of America and buying mostly just American Blu-Rays and trying to rip them that you might butt heads with "impossible" copy protection more often *shrugs*

[gah]

Well he lives in America and primarily buys American Blu-Ray discs. Yes he buys imported Blu-Ray discs but many are not region coded. So really he only has to do the trick (rip it and burn it to make it region free) when it is an import that has region coding. He has a lot like that but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the bulk of what he buys. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that he has yet to find one that he cannot rip and copy properly.

I suppose if you are outside of America and buying mostly just American Blu-Rays and trying to rip them that you might butt heads with "impossible" copy protection more often *shrugs*

Upon further attempts, it seems that my cheap USB Blu-ray drive is a piece of garbage that keeps resetting every so often, forcing AnyDVD to start over and often fail to read the disc completely. I ordered a lightly used Pioneer SATA BD-RW drive and a SATA to eSATA cable off eBay; hopefully that'll fail less. If not, I guess I'll just have to give up or get an American player.

Is it just me, or is this whole zone thing a big stupid scam? Isn't it kind of bull that they expect us Europeans to just settle for inferior blu-ray releases with limited bonus materials or buy multiple blu-ray players? I don't want Swedish subtitles (I live in the 21st century, I speak English), I want a commentary track, and the only way to do that while still "playing by the rules" is to buy two or three different players (two or three of which pretty much have to be imported), which, if they're going to be new players and not used, pretty much requires the consumer to be rich. And on top of that, they're putting HDCP and AACS and stuff on it, to prevent us from conveniently watching movies on our computers.

It's no wonder, with how much these companies love to make things inconvenient for consumers, that piracy is such a big thing. It's clearly not about "I want this for free". It's about "your product is painfully inconvenient, and I'm not going to bother with it until you stop being dicks about it". If they came out with a blu-ray player that's region free by default (that didn't cost some insane amount), I wouldn't even go the eBay route; I'd just go to the store and empty my flea-eaten wallet on the counter. Hell, if blu-ray went away and the standard became digital downloads with all the bonus materials of a special edition zone A blu-ray, I'd buy those all the time and spend less money on players, because that's user friendly thinking, and that's the direction things should be going. If I have a laptop and an internet connection, all I should need to watch a movie and all its extras is to pay for the content. I shouldn't have to buy a mountain of players and signal converter boxes and adapters and work-around software just to see a stupid blooper reel.

[jman98]

gah - In my experience Pioneer drives are very good so as long as it really is "lightly used" I think there is a good chance the drive will work OK for you.

Hollywood actually does not want you to buy multiple players. They don't want you to play discs outside of your region at all. The original reason for this was that in the past Hollywood sometimes delayed movie releases for up to year in places like Asia, so they thought that region codes would prevent pirates from copying Hollywood movies that had already been released to theaters and were out on DVD in North America before they had even made it to the theaters in Asia. I'm not a fan of BluRay regions but at least there are only 3 and in my opinion the region divisions now make a little sense. The reason now that they don't want you to play BluRay discs outside of your region is that the licensing is different for each region so they don't want you to watch a disc outside of your region since somebody paid good money for the (in your case) region B rights and if you are easily able to watch a region A BluRay, that makes those costs suspect. It's all about protecting cash flow. Movies are very rarely released at different times around the world now usually at worse it's just a difference of a few weeks or a month.

[gah]

Hollywood actually does not want you to buy multiple players. They don't want you to play discs outside of your region at all. The original reason for this was that in the past Hollywood sometimes delayed movie releases for up to year in places like Asia, so they thought that region codes would prevent pirates from copying Hollywood movies that had already been released to theaters and were out on DVD in North America before they had even made it to the theaters in Asia. I'm not a fan of BluRay regions but at least there are only 3 and in my opinion the region divisions now make a little sense. The reason now that they don't want you to play BluRay discs outside of your region is that the licensing is different for each region so they don't want you to watch a disc outside of your region since somebody paid good money for the (in your case) region B rights and if you are easily able to watch a region A BluRay, that makes those costs suspect. It's all about protecting cash flow. Movies are very rarely released at different times around the world now usually at worse it's just a difference of a few weeks or a month.

And all that would be fine and dandy if these licensing deals included some sort of clause that demands that the international distributor has to include all of the extras. I simply refuse to buy a Zone B release if the Zone A release has more/better features. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to buy a Swedish release of an American movie is to give it to my mother, who doesn't understand English very well. Subtitles aside, the Swedish release of an American film is always, with no exception, inferior product, and I refuse to pay full price for inferior product. I spent years in school learning the English language in great detail, and I refuse to accept inferior product because some corporation decided to make assumptions about what I should want from a product based on my location. If I want to sit around for two hours listening to some American director talking about their creative process, I should have as much ability to do that as someone who lives in America. This is the age of the Internet. We're a global community now. National boundaries should be a thing of the past. I don't even know why we're bothering with discs. I should be able to pay for a download with all of the bonus materials, download it to my hard drive and watch it all. Sure, that's opening up for easier piracy, but it's also making piracy unnecessary, because piracy isn't a price issue as much as it's a convenience issue. If these stubborn corporations would just make things easily accessible, convenient and fully featured to any customer regardless of location, most people wouldn't bother with piracy. Just look at Steam. It's a convenient platform for easily paying for and downloading fully featured computer games. I don't know anyone who downloaded Portal 2 illegally, because it's easy and convenient to get legally, and there aren't any additional fees for extras (just recently, there was a major free update including a level editor and a network for user-created levels). That's what the movie industry should be doing. They should be selling fully featured downloads, with extras included and occasional surprise bonuses. That's a system that has been proven to work, and yet the movie industry is still messing around with region locks and copy protections and higher prices while whining about piracy. That's just such backward thinking.