Could someone please tell me where in Canada I can buy a DVD player that will play DVDs bought from England - I think they are Area 2 and we are Area 1.

I remember seeing various posts about DVD players that can play both. I am sure there will be someone here who can tell me what I need to buy and where I could buy it - not too expensively I hope - in Canad.

We were looking on the BBC website and there are all kinds of DVDs that look really interesting - the TV show "Coast" is one of them and I thought if I had a player that could play the different area DVDs then next time I am home I could buy some DVDs there.

i just bought a Koss DVD player from Cdn Tire which was very simple to "hack" to region free it also plays memory cards so you can watch your digital camera pics onto TV

The NOVA DVD players sold at Futureshop/Best Buy seem to be region free straight from the box , but the quality is iffy

do a google search for region hacks to find codes for particular players
the website i use i think was videohelp.com

There is a hack for the Diamond DVD player from walmart that costs about 40 bucks. Weve had it for about 7 months without no problems.

The hack sets it to Region 0, allows you to play all regions.

Use videohelp.com

I have absolutely no idea what a "hack" is or how I would figure out how to "hack" a dvd player. Can't I just buy one off the shelf that is all regions and is a decent dvd player?

Most DVD players in canada are multi-region, and multi system (PAL / NTSC).

Check out www.futureshop.ca

We've had 2 ready to play all regions off the shelf, had a bad experience with a hack in the UK, worked perfectly for a while then refused to play any of a new batch of R1s... so I'm wary of relying on hacks, certainly on expensive machines as that one was.

The ones we've bought here are Daiwa, model DVD-6129, available from London Drugs - see link . We've played R1s, R2s and R4s on them just fine. NTSC/PAL conversion also confirmed as we're using NTSC only Canadian-bought TVs.

More and more DVD's are being released with "Enhanced Region Encoding" to stop hacked DVD players playing them.

This year should see the release of the first Blue Laser and HD DVD players, so be prepared to re-buy all your collection......again

We bought a DVD player last year (we'd inherited the previous one). We were aware of the 'region' thingy so it was an important feature. After extensive research we were amazed to find a Phillips in Zellers(!) that was not expensive and played all region DVD's. It's coming up to a year old and is still working perfectly. Our UK visitors (mainly our children) bring their home movies and other films on DVD's which we are able to view.

A hack is a specific key sequence you press on the remote or front panel buttons to change the region or make it region free. You can look it up online for your particular model DVD player.

Plus its P*ss easy to do Liz,

We bought a multi regional DVD player from Future Shop last week...$35!

Well - how about that. I went to videohelp.com and looked up "hacks" and then followed the instructions for my DVD player and sure enough - you could change the region.

So, one final question - if I change the region to "0" - does that mean it will play all videos from all regions without changing the region again?

Should do.

Dozzzzy

Unless you got a crunt of aplayer that requires a firmware hack and having to burn cd's to mess with the player...mostly Sony and the like...what joy *l*

Mine was easy to do - but its an "el cheapo" Cyberhome from Walmart. You pay $49 and when they go wrong you chuckem and get a new one. What a sad commentary on how things are today!!!