looking for a region free dvd blu ray player.....

[CODEWERKX]

i have searched the forum and found no definitive answers that i find suitable. also, i do not wish to purchase a 'grey' market item. the player has to be region fre for dvd only......blu-ray does not have to be reion free. thank you for your patience and assistance.

[jman98]

The VERY expensive Oppo brand can be made region free for both with a hardware modification. Some Oppo resellers do the mod for you. Some sell you an un-modded player and you have to buy and install the mod on your own. It's up to you to do your research on this subject. I think there are Oppo forums elsewhere if you search for them.

Hollywood doesn't want any manufacturer to produce any players that can be made region free. Period. In fact the BluRay licensing agreement explicitly forbids region free players even if only for DVD. This is why Oppo players must be modded by third parties. Sony and Samung BD and DVD players sold in North America are essentially impossible to unlock so whatever you do, do NOT buy Sony or Samsung.

Because of the licensing, Philips must officially deny that they produce any players that can be made region free. However, they did make at least one BD player for North America that could be made region free for DVDs only. The downside, and it's huge, is that the player did NOT convert between PAL and NTSC so if you put a region 2 PAL DVD in it, it would play it but it would only send out the video as PAL. This is very bad for a good number of North American HDTVs. It's a bit of a crapshoot as to whether your HDTV would play PAL natively or not. Samsung models absolutely will NOT do this. Other brands are iffy. I think I've heard rumors that LG may have a BD player for sale in North America that can be made region free, but I don't know any details at all. But you might try to research LG and see what you can find or maybe someone will post if they know something.

It is still possible to find DVD only players that can be made region free. The Philips DVP3560 is such a player. BestBuy stopped selling it but Amazon has resellers who still sell it. Best Buy had it for about $39.95 but it will cost you about $48 + shipping on Amazon.

[CODEWERKX]

thank you for the polite, cogent and prompt reply......i might do well to get two players one region free dvd and one blu-ray.

[spiritgumm]

it's still possible to look for a hackable bluray player for Pal/Ntsc playback. Besides Philips, I've read of at least one Insignia bluray players would fit this description (see list below). You could also search the DVD Hacks here, but I dont think you can sort out the bluray from dvd.
In the Philips blurary model jm98 mentioned, it's possible the Pal output would be fine thru the HDMI cable.
I've read that other brands like Sony also have region-free hacks, and since the point is for Pal/Ntsc playback, I'm assuming they would do that.
Here's a list which sometimes indicates if a bluray player can be made region-free (although that's not the purpose of the list).
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=95245

[jman98]

spiritgumm's well meaning post (nice link by the way) is unfortunately completely inaccurate about Sony. There's not even one Sony BluRay player sold in the USA/Canada that we've had a verified report on it being able to be made region free. There are ZERO on that list on page 1 (sorry, but I refuse to read every page of the thread).

I advise great caution with Samsung. We've only had ONE report that we cannot verify of a Samsung BD player sold in North America that can be made region free. You buy Samsung, you willingly gamble your money.

Finally, I really do not know what "compatible" in that link means. It could mean simply that the player is capable of playing 25 or 50 fps video, but incapable of converting it to NTSC frame rates. If you see a player in that list that it says can be made region free, try to confirm it elsewhere just to be safe. Note that only a handful of those players are said to be able to be made region free. Most of them seem to just play PAL DVDs as PAL video.