All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

Discuss internationally-released DVDs and Blu-rays or other international DVD and Blu-ray-related topics.
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fiddlesticks
Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:19 pm
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1176 Post by fiddlesticks » Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:40 pm

I have purchased several players and other accessories from 220 Electronics over the years and I have been entirely satisfied.

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Godot
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1177 Post by Godot » Sun Feb 04, 2018 5:07 pm

Like fiddlesticks and sinemadelisikiz, I have also purchased from 220-Electronics and been satisfied. I was dubious of buying pre-modified hardware, so I bought kits on Ebay to modify my Oppos. However, it takes a bit of time and skill to install the kits, so I took a gamble with 220-Electronics, buying a Sony BDP-S6500 modified for all-region Blu-ray playback. The experience was easy with good customer support (answering my questions before and alerting me to the shipment status), and I had no problems with the unit, so I bought another six months later when they had a sale.

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371229
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1178 Post by 371229 » Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:41 pm

I too have bought both my Oppo 103 and 203 from 220-Electronics... and have been very happy.

David M.
Joined: Sat May 10, 2008 1:10 pm

Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1179 Post by David M. » Thu Mar 29, 2018 3:22 pm

I'm another happy 220 Electronics customer.

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Ribs
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Re: The Future of Home Video

#1180 Post by Ribs » Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:57 pm



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mfunk9786
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1182 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Apr 11, 2018 1:45 pm

Not trying to gaslight you, hearthesilence, but moved Ribs' post about this from a little over a week ago into this thread in order to keep it all in one place.

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hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1183 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Apr 11, 2018 1:49 pm

No worries - I originally came to this thread to look for more news about this.

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fdm
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1184 Post by fdm » Wed Apr 11, 2018 2:36 pm

As I posted in that other thread, I've been convinced that I may be able to use my Oppo BDP-103 region free external mod with the UDP-203. So I don't know why the mod on ebay for the 203 is twice as much (and no pictures to confirm/deny it's any different), probably somebody just price gouging. So player from Oppo + $58 external mod could be a more viable option instead of paying somebody what ends up being now a couple hundred extra to give you the same thing. (And so my post above from end of January is out of date and may not have been quite right about it being a wash either way.)

My new math: 549 for the player, under 20 for shipping (it may vary), 58 for the easy to install on the back mod if you don't already have one, that all comes to around $625. 220 Electonics is now selling the modified 203s for 799 (my recollection from January was they were charging 699). [And they are hugely gouging for a region free UDP-205 charging an extra 2200 over Oppo list of 1299... supposedly the 205s are likely to be getting one last production run in the next couple months (sign up if interested).]

I know that's in the stratosphere for many here, but those are the numbers I've come up with for US options (and somebody aside from 220 Electronics may have lower pricing). I'll probably order one from Oppo in a couple days (and confirm/deny if my mod kit will work on it).

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Drucker
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1185 Post by Drucker » Wed Apr 11, 2018 2:58 pm

I bought the 203 from 220 for a cool $649. The major advantage to buying from 220 is they mod the hardware itself, so there should be no risk w/r/t firmware upgrades and the like.

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fdm
Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2006 1:25 pm

Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1186 Post by fdm » Wed Apr 11, 2018 3:36 pm

Yeah that was a pretty good price. Usually all they do is just stick in (add to the player) one of the same hardware mod kits you could buy elsewhere yourself (pretty cheaply). Fairly simple to install it yourself if you want to open the player up, really really simple if you install it externally instead, but either way they, or you, are not actually changing any of the player's original hardware.

My external mod can also be installed internally, so you'd never know the difference between the two, they behave the same. But why bother going through all that when you can just stick it on the back in a couple minutes.

No difference regarding there being any firmware upgrade etc risks either, never had a problem or heard of any (with the mods out there I've seen recently).

(Some of the older (different/more complicated) mods used to have issues where you (or maybe it was actually someone else) would have to update the mod's firmware sometimes when the player's firmware was updated, but those were different animals, probably extinct by now. Fortunately I never had those kinds.)

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Zinoviev
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1187 Post by Zinoviev » Thu Apr 12, 2018 5:16 pm

Does anyone know whether the Oppo 203 or any other unlockable BD players will play audio while fast-forwarding? My old (region-locked) Panasonic would play audio (and, if I recall, display subtitles) while watching video at 1.5x speed, and I really embraced this technique as a means to get through two-guys-talking-on-a-couch supplements a bit more quickly. The all-region Seiki, for all its virtues, won't play audio while fast forwarding.

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Murdoch
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 11:59 pm
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1188 Post by Murdoch » Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:35 pm

So I bought a Seiki SR4KP1 but it's stretching films shot in Academy to 16:9. Under the Display Setting in the Setup menu the TV screen is set to 16:9 full (I'm using a 28 inch 16:9 computer monitor) and it won't let me change the setting. Anyone have a fix to this?

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fdm
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1189 Post by fdm » Wed Apr 18, 2018 5:04 pm

So a quick follow-up to the Oppo 203 and being able to use the Oppo 103 region free kit with it. I just tried it and it does work, so I would suspect they all do. The one I have I got from ebay a couple years ago was from seller avsdigital, never had a problem with it through many firmware updates and probably a similar number of region changes. Just plugged it in to the back.

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jedgeco
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1190 Post by jedgeco » Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:48 pm

I bit the bullet and bought the UDP-203. Plugged the external mod from my 103 into it, and region free works exactly the same, no muss, no fuss.

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jorencain
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1191 Post by jorencain » Wed May 16, 2018 10:35 pm

I have the Toshiba BDX3300 blu-ray player, which is region-free. It has worked fine for me for several years, but a month or so ago it stopped recognizing discs when they are inserted. DVD or blu-ray, R1 or R2...it doesn't matter. I don't know whether a firmware update is the answer; all I can find online are firmware updates for BDX3300KU. Has anybody else encountered this issue? I don't have the money right now to buy another player, so I'm hoping this is fixable.

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MichaelB
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1192 Post by MichaelB » Thu May 17, 2018 3:46 am

My Toshiba BDX1200 gave up the ghost in a similar fashion. I’d had it for years, so I assumed that I’d just worn it down.

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jorencain
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1193 Post by jorencain » Thu May 17, 2018 8:54 pm

MichaelB wrote:My Toshiba BDX1200 gave up the ghost in a similar fashion. I’d had it for years, so I assumed that I’d just worn it down.
Thanks. That’s probably the case for mine too, unfortunately.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1194 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu May 17, 2018 9:34 pm

Different lasers for Blu-Ray and DVD (and yet another for CDs), I believe. So something fundamental would seem to have died. :-(

artfilmfan
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1195 Post by artfilmfan » Thu May 17, 2018 10:01 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:Different lasers for Blu-Ray and DVD (and yet another for CDs), I believe. So something fundamental would seem to have died. :-(
... as time goes by. ;)

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Askew
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2010 4:23 pm

Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1196 Post by Askew » Thu May 17, 2018 10:21 pm

jorencain wrote:I have the Toshiba BDX3300 blu-ray player, which is region-free. It has worked fine for me for several years, but a month or so ago it stopped recognizing discs when they are inserted. DVD or blu-ray, R1 or R2...it doesn't matter. I don't know whether a firmware update is the answer; all I can find online are firmware updates for BDX3300KU. Has anybody else encountered this issue? I don't have the money right now to buy another player, so I'm hoping this is fixable.
Have you tried cleaning the lens?

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jorencain
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:45 am

Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1197 Post by jorencain » Thu May 17, 2018 10:57 pm

Askew wrote:
jorencain wrote:I have the Toshiba BDX3300 blu-ray player, which is region-free. It has worked fine for me for several years, but a month or so ago it stopped recognizing discs when they are inserted. DVD or blu-ray, R1 or R2...it doesn't matter. I don't know whether a firmware update is the answer; all I can find online are firmware updates for BDX3300KU. Has anybody else encountered this issue? I don't have the money right now to buy another player, so I'm hoping this is fixable.
Have you tried cleaning the lens?
You mean...like blowing inside the tray opening, like I used to do with my Atari as a kid?

After trying that ;) I took the top off of the player and cleaned what I could. It seems that the disc isn’t even spinning when I put it in. I don’t know if that’s the cause of the player not reading a disc, or a result of it not having read the disc. I think the diagnosis is that it’s just time for that big junkyard in the sky for the ol’ BDX3300.

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Askew
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1198 Post by Askew » Fri May 18, 2018 7:06 am

jorencain wrote:You mean...like blowing inside the tray opening, like I used to do with my Atari as a kid?

After trying that ;) I took the top off of the player and cleaned what I could. It seems that the disc isn’t even spinning when I put it in. I don’t know if that’s the cause of the player not reading a disc, or a result of it not having read the disc. I think the diagnosis is that it’s just time for that big junkyard in the sky for the ol’ BDX3300.
Chance are the reason why the player is not spinning, is because it cannot read the discs. Personally this happens about every six months to my Seiki player that I've had for the past eight years. When it starts acting up, I open the player and clean the lens with isopropyl alcohol on a q-tip. After cleaning the lens the player reads the discs just like when the player was brand new.

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Minkin
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Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1199 Post by Minkin » Thu Jun 14, 2018 7:14 am

Minkin wrote:
Mon Dec 12, 2011 2:15 am
Thanks Mfunk,

After all the bad press on the Insignia players and my fears over what firmware a new sherwood would have, I bought the LG that you linked - as a gift for my family. Should be a good Christmas.
So, my Sherwood finally died a while ago, and I've just gone without any region-free capability for about a year or so. Then I realized that my family never uses any Region B/2 discs, so I offered to trade them my working Region A blu player in exchange for the "hardware-unlocked LG BD630" that I bought them as a gift from Bombay Electronics.

The only issue: I can't get it to play any region B blurays! I was under the impression that it didn't require any codes or one didn't have to change anything in order to get other region discs to play. Bombay Electronics indicates that it should be fine through any firmware update, so I have no idea what could've happened to cause this issue. Did my family somehow un-enable region free capability? Wanting to check with others who own this to make sure it isn't a code one has to type in (akin to the Sherwood) - before I contact Bombay. Ugh.

Just checked - Region 2 DVDs do indeed work without changing anything + Region 1/A DVDs/Blus work... its just not Region B Blu-rays. There's an "area code" section on the menu, that some online reports indicated changing it to "GB/FR/DE/ etc" -but none of those do anything. There's no other setting anywhere that looks like it could have any impact (lest I want to set it back to factory settings). Its just weird, and I'm not sure why this is being such a pain! Anybody have any input?

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theflirtydozen
Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2014 4:21 pm

Re: All-Region DVD and Blu-ray Player Advice

#1200 Post by theflirtydozen » Thu Jun 14, 2018 8:27 am

I forget exactly what type of player I have from Bombay Electronics, but I know that to switch from Region A to B the player has to be off and the blue (or second colored) button on the remote needs to be held/pressed and then the player will turn on in Region B. Likewise, to go from B to A, the yellow (or first colored) button is held and then it boots in Region A. And I guess to get into Region C (though I've never done it), one would hold the red (or third colored) button. So I guess if that's how Bombay mods all their stuff try that?

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