BluRay Player: Region Free, Divx & H264

[Tom Saurus]

I have some questions; thanks in advance for any information you can give me. I have been thinking of getting my first BluRay player. I recently found a website in Canada that has a huge selection of DVDs at reasonable prices. Being a fan of Britcoms I have noticed quite a significant price difference if a person were to buy the DVD boxsets in the Pal format as apposed to the NTSC format. I did a google search and found this player:

http://www.220-electronics.com/dvd/LG_BD630_region_free_dvd_player.htm

I convert my own personal recordings to .divx and play them on a Phillips DVD player. I stuck with .divx or .xvid because that is what the player could play when I made data discs with my media files on them. I was wondering if I was to make a data disc and switch to encoding my video recordings to .h264 would a BluRay player play them.

I also wonder since the player I found on the internet says it has USB 2.0 playback that I could hook up a powered USB hard drive and play files from that and I am assuming that I could play .h264 files.

I was thinking since I want to get a BluRay player and also a LED TV that I should get a player with the multi-region option for playing PAL DVD's and perhaps PAL BluRay discs in the future. I don't want to have to get two different players if one player could do it all. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[jagabo]

if I was to make a data disc and switch to encoding my video recordings to .h264 would a BluRay player play them.

Depends on which player. Many won't play them at all. Some have restrictions on frame size, etc. Some are more flexible. Get a media player like the Western Digital WDTV instead. Then play your files off network shares, external USB drives, etc. Forget little plastic discs.

[Constant Gardener]

I tried a cheap Blu-Ray player from Wal-Mart - it played everything I threw at it, including .mkv and PAL, but my kids complained about a whine that I couldn't hear (I'm 60+) so back it went. Perhaps it was a bad unit. Anyway, worth a look if you're near a Wal-Mart.

I've bought quite a few PAL DVDs from amazon.uk - good prices, and they usually arrive in about a week. They play flawlessly on my six-year-old Oppo that is set to region 0. Blu-Rays go on the PS3. Downloaded stuff never sees optical disc but gets played through a networked WDTV media player. Not sure what I'll do when the Oppo dies (or my son moves out with his PS3) - the Oppo Blu-Ray player looks good but it's not cheap.

[mikey man]

This is a versitile Blu-Ray player, handles all-regions & PAL regular discs, Blu-Ray "A" discs (don't have other Blu-Rays):
Hiteker Blu-Ray Disc Player (Model TLBD-02)
Hard to find, got a used one off eBay a couple months ago.

[FulciLives]

A friend of mine is looking for a Blu-Ray player that can do SD & HD MKV and AVI from a DVD disc. In my (limited) research I turned up a Philips model that seems decent and one by LG (including a new model by LG that just came out and looks promising).

Problem is neither of the two get glowing reviews. Seems to work well for some while others say it's crap and breaks easily etc.

The two I've been looking at are:

1.) Philips BDP3406/F7
2.) LG BP620

Actually the LG BP620 is a new model but I've heard good things about the last model which I think is the LG BP630 but I'm not sure now on that model number. Seems odd the new one is a lower number. You think they would have gone with 640 instead of 620 but whatever.

I just know both of these players can handle a variety of formats from a DVD disc as well as from USB 2.0

Both can also do PAL but I heard the Philips hack to be region free no longer works. The older LG had a hack, not sure if it still works, the new one doesn't have a hack YET but I say YET because it is very new. Again they both will do PAL from region free DVD's or from file formats.

I guess I'm saying that based on my research so far these seem to be the two top choices. I'm interested to hear about others though that I may not know about!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jman98]

We had reports on Philips BD players that they could be hacked to be "region free" but that they were NOT converting players at all and the hack only worked on DVDs. So you could make your Philips BD player region free for DVD playback, but it only displayed PAL DVD as PAL output and NTSC DVD as NTSC output. This is bad for some North American consumers. Samsung HDTVs, for example, cannot handle a PAL signal at all. I'm not sure if the Philips hack has really vanished or if what I said is still true.

We've had people recommend some LG model in North America that can apparently still be made region free for DVD playback, but I don't remember the model number.

[tarzan54]

constant gardener is right about the OPPO player, I had mine for about 3 years and no problem it's the best but it's expensive, I would stay away from Sony, Panasonic and LG seem to be good players.

[Tom Saurus]

Thanks for all the advice. I am getting lazier as time goes on. I am warming to what jagabo suggested to archive to usb hard drives and stop filling up all these 4gb discs. The hard drive prices are starting to go down again and they are getting larger.

If the Blu-ray player will allow me to play a BluRay disc and allow me to play PAL dvds as well as the NTSC dvds that is enough for me. I plan on getting an LED television not a great big huge one and since my computer has hdmi out I could use it play just about any file on the TV screen with as long as I get one with the 1920x? native resolution. If I can scrimp some money together I want to get one more Windows 7 desktop computer as I don't want anything to do with the tablet technology that is probably going to take over with Windows 8.

There is a huge savings in buying the PAL DVDs. The complete series of "One Foot In The Grave" is 80 dollars cheaper if I recall correctly in the PAL format versus the NTSC format.

I am not going to invest in a Blu-ray burner or blank Blu-ray discs. If my TV screen isn't too large I am sure I will be content with DVD quality and thrill at Blu-ray discs when I find a title I like and can afford. I am mighty tempted to buy the first season of Game Of Thrones, I have read the studio did an awesome job in the quality of the Blu-ray disc.

[NICEBUD]

Tom
You might want to look at these links


http://www.amazon.co.uk/PANASONIC-CODEFREE-DMP-BD75-MultiZone-012345678/dp/B005KM1ZYS/ref=pd_cp_ce_1

Just a suggestion.

http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=41885

Be wary of this Anti Consumer Cinavia it might change your view of bd.

[FulciLives]

If you are going to put together a PC just for playback of video then consider going with Linux, such as Linux Mint 13 or Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or better yet read this article: CLICK HERE

Here's a video that shows the XMBC interface on a HDTV: CLICK HERE

[usually_quiet]

A friend of mine is looking for a Blu-Ray player that can do SD & HD MKV and AVI from a DVD disc. In my (limited) research I turned up a Philips model that seems decent and one by LG (including a new model by LG that just came out and looks promising).

Problem is neither of the two get glowing reviews. Seems to work well for some while others say it's crap and breaks easily etc.

The two I've been looking at are:

1.) Philips BDP3406/F7
2.) LG BP620

Actually the LG BP620 is a new model but I've heard good things about the last model which I think is the LG BP630 but I'm not sure now on that model number. Seems odd the new one is a lower number. You think they would have gone with 640 instead of 620 but whatever.

I just know both of these players can handle a variety of formats from a DVD disc as well as from USB 2.0

Both can also do PAL but I heard the Philips hack to be region free no longer works. The older LG had a hack, not sure if it still works, the new one doesn't have a hack YET but I say YET because it is very new. Again they both will do PAL from region free DVD's or from file formats.

I guess I'm saying that based on my research so far these seem to be the two top choices. I'm interested to hear about others though that I may not know about!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

It came up in another thread that the new LG Blu-Ray players don't support DivX, only XVid. (The manual for the LG BP620 doesn't mention DivX playback as being supported, and when one of our members tested a LG BP220, it refused to play a DivX .avi until its fourcc id was changed to xvid. However, I think last year's models from LG did play DivX .avi files.

[FulciLives]

Well DivX is the last thing I'm worried about. I think almost every AVI that I or my friend has are XviD and we are quickly replacing those with better, higher quality x264 encodes. So thanks for the heads up on DivX but I could care less, especially if it can be "fixed" by doing the old FOURCC change.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Tom Saurus]

FulciLives: Thanks for the links to the additional information. The computer tech that I do business with could probably build me a media center PC. I was talking to him to him today and he was telling me the price of a Blu-ray drive for my computer are not all that expensive now. Perhaps I could have several DVD drives in a media player PC, one is Blu-Ray, one drive for NTSC playback, and one for PAL playback. Have several hard drives for files and ensure hdmi output to the LED TV. Other than playing files, I want to be able to play Solitaire. I am a big fan of the free Pysol 1000 solitaire game, enough games to keep a person entertained for a lifetime. Also I could put VLC and Media Player Classic on the computer and it should be able to play just about any audio/video file.