Tuesday 31 January, 2006

New toy, oh yes

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. The cheapo DVD player that I got after the old expensive one died about year and a half ago has gone to meet it's maker too. Year and a half - not an awful lot of time for a piece of electronics, but then again I pretty much expected something of this sort so it doesn't exactly make me angry. Slightly annoyed, yes, but it just means I get to buy a new toy.

Funny thing (to me anyway) is that on this side of the Atlantic, multi-region DVD players are almost unheard of. In fact, most Americans are shocked when they hear that DVDs have regions and that they wouldn't be able to play European DVDs even if they wanted (and they mostly don't). So finding one is not as trivial as one might think - mostly because multi-region capability is not advertised.

I'm picking up a new one probably tomorrow from Futureshop, it's LG LDA-530 and it's both multi-region (capable) and plays DivX too. Our current main DVD player (the lovely Sony HDD DVR) is of course region 1 only, but I've come to accept that two DVD players seems to be the only way to achieve everything we need. And playing DivX is very very handy and it's probably the most used feature on the old dead player and was a must when selecting the new one. I'll let you know how I get on.

Posted by kolibri at 31 January 22:07, 2006
Comments
# 1 - Gareth Lewin (on February 1, 2006 09:06 AM):

Almost every DVD player can be region unlocked, it's just a case of finding the codes on the internet.

Sony are the only real exception, and that's because they are the primary interested party in regioning of dvd players.

Even my handhend DVD player I bought for the trip to Australia I managed to unlock.

My main point? Don't pay extra for "multi region". Get a good DVD player, and just unlock it. Make sure the DVD player you are buying supports 720p, 1080i, and hopefully 1080p. Make sure it has component out, optical out, and HDMI. Plan for the future.


# 2 - kolibri [TypeKey Profile Page] (on February 1, 2006 09:14 AM):

Well, our main player, as said, is indeed a Sony and therefore it's not much help with multi-region disks. What I really want is a Divx player... and I want it cheap. Then it doesn't matter if it breaks again after 18 months, or if I want to upgrade later on. Our TV is really new too, so chances are we won't be getting HDTV anytime in the near future anyway.


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