Are there any negative effects from using a hack on my DVD player?

[Akabane Kurodo]

Will anything happen down the line?

Also, I found a hack on this site that gets rid of the region codes on my Sanyo DWM-370... but what about making it able to play PAL?

[guns1inger]

If the hack takes, nothing else will go wrong. If the player has to go in for repairs it might be reset.

PAL playback relies on the correct circuitry. Sometimes it is there, knobbled by the firmware. In these cases a hack might free it up. Mostly though, if it is NTSC only out of the box, it will always be NTSC only. A region hack won't change that.

[Akabane Kurodo]

If the hack takes, nothing else will go wrong.

What about these new DVDs that are coming out, I heard they don't play on a DVD player that's been hacked?

Mostly though, if it is NTSC only out of the box, it will always be NTSC only. A region hack won't change that.

Is there a hack that will?

[guns1inger]

If the hack takes, nothing else will go wrong.

What about these new DVDs that are coming out, I heard they don't play on a DVD player that's been hacked?

Crapolla, basically. A DVD disc doesn't know if you have hacked a player or not. A few years back there was a copy protection called RCE used in the US. It queried the player to ensure the player was in the same region was the disc. It didn't matter if the player was region free or not, just that it was a region 1 player. This caused a minor inconvenience for some players which could not be made region free, but whose regions could be changed instead. Users had to remember to change the regions back to region one for these discs. Any play back issues with newer discs is more likely to be related to the stupid amount of butchery the studios build into the authoring in the name of so-called copy protection.

Mostly though, if it is NTSC only out of the box, it will always be NTSC only. A region hack won't change that.

Is there a hack that will?

Not if the player doesn't have the hardware, and generally if it is NTSC only then it is NTSC only.