Would i be able to play a pal dvd with a sony blu ray player

[fceurich]

i was understanding that blu ray players were region free meaning i could play region 2 pal dvd on them also i have a sony hd tv will a pal dvd work?

[turk690]

DVD has options for 6 DVD regions which Hollywood, for one, duly uses to restrict how DVDs get around worldwide. It would be nice if the one step up to high definition region coding would disappear, but with Blue-ray region coding is indeed alive and well (there are 3 Blue-ray regions). I've so far seen three brands of Blue-ray players in stores (Sony, Panasonic, & Sharp) and a glance at their backends indicate that they have region coding, one for Blue-ray and another for DVD. Players in the USA for example, are marked "A" (Blue-ray), and "1" (DVD). In Hong Kong, the Sharp player I saw was marked "B" and "3" (although the salesman did demonstrate that, despite the "3" region code mark, it does play ALL DVDs, but the Blue-ray "B" was true-blue).
HD-DVD has no region code as yet, but as it is being run down to ground by groups fore and aft, whether the region code-free thing will still be a useful fact till year end remains to be seen.

[jman98]

I wouldn't count on being able to play region 2 DVDs on a BluRay player. Current HD DVD player from Toshiba that are sold in the USA refuse to play PAL video whether the disc is region coded or not and have no way to be put into multi-region mode. I would expect a similar thing from Sony although I don't own a BluRay player so I can't say for sure. The player may be technically capable of playing PAL video (unlike Toshiba's players) as Sony in the past has usually support playing PAL on DVD players sold in the USA, but I'm not sure that you can put the play in multi-region mode. You might be forced to rip the DVD and strip the region coding and reburn it to play it in these players.

The reviews here for Sony's BluRay players do not state that the players can play PAL DVD. One guy admitted not testing it. Some crackhead from Norway claims a Sony BluRay player will play Divx/Xvid and that my friend is complete b.s.

turk690 is correct that BluRay has its own region codes. Japan is in the same region as the USA. Europe is not. You don't have to use region codes on the discs, but some discs from Hollywood do use the codes. Foreign films tend not to use them.

[Krispy Kritter]

As stated above, there are now two region codes in affect for HD disc players (HD-DVD & Blu-Ray). There is the standard DVD region coding system and the HD region coding system. None of the current HD players can be "hacked" and they are enforce standard DVD region coding.

From personal experience, the Toshiba A3, the Toshiba A30, and the Sony PS3 will not play PAL content even on a DVD copy with the region coding removed.

So you will need to keep your SD region free dvd player if you have content from another region (which uses a different video format).