Does anyone know of any cheap multi region DVD players that will play both UK and US DVD's.

Thanks

Yep.

The Missus bought us a Phillips DVP 642. It comes as region 1, but you can program it to multiregion with the remote. Amazon has them for $63. I've been happily watching Fred Dibnah and Brass Eye on it.

or there's that cyberhome one ,300s i believe, for $40 from Wal-mart

The phillips one may cost more, but has more bells and whistles.

I would recommend spending a little more, in the 120-175 region. You will get better more complete conversion and most companies will have personally modified the players and guarantee they will play all current and future discs. Try regionfreedvd.net, I just got a JVC player from them and am very happy.

The Phillips DVP-642 is really the one to get. It's easy to make muti-region, and you barely notice the signal conversion on it. It also plays most mpg and avi files, so it's a good all-rounder.

We got one of those as a spare. With our Best Buy rebates it cost approximately zero $s and works perfectly well.

We also bought the Philips 642. At first we were disappointed as the picture was quite foggy when playing PAL DVDs. Having read only good things about it I decided that there must have been a problem with this specific one and took it back for an exchange. The new one was perfect and we are happy with it.

That's really very odd advice.

"Spend more because I just did, and the company that did the work did it more completely than a standard multi-region DVD"

The Philips DVP 642 plays all regions, PAL, NTSC, SECAM, mp3 cds, music DVDs, ogg vorbis cds, divX (3, 4 & 5) video, VCDs, SVCDs, CDRW, DVD+RW, DVD-RW... and more.

I picked one up new on www.newegg.com for $45 including shipping a few months back, and then found one for a family member for $32 after rebate a couple of months later through www.techbargains.com.

If you have a specific requirement that the DVP 642 can't do (I don't know what that would be) then by all means knock yourself out and spend 4x the money, but otherwise save your cash.

Oh, and www.regionfreedvd.net is a rip-off. They are offering the very same Philips DVP 642 for $139 reduced to only $109 in their sale. That gives them a 200% mark up on the $45 I paid, and effectively makes them not just high-priced but basically a scam. The list price of this model is only $79.99.

as before Philips DVP642 - $40 at comp usa - easy to hack and picture quality is fine ... well it is for watching Balamory anyway

ROFL! We only decided to get our multi-region DVD to play Bagpuss and The Clangers. I'm so glad we didn't tell our girls that there were Balamory DVDs!

Now I'll have that damned song running through my head all week though. Thanks Eskimo!

wouldnt you like to know

Loads of players...but check out: http://www.videohelp.com/ first to check to see how easy they are to hack....one's that can't be done with a remote tend to be a pain in the arse.

and check out www.cobyusa.com there players are cheap and easy to fix, plus there pretty good value for money...

play's ogg does it? what about wmv? because mine didn't...

I bought a reconditioned one of these: Philips DVD727

But you can't buy them anymore. If I was buying one today, I think I'd follow everyone else and get the DVP642, it has more features than mine but the same price for a brand new player.

You're right Bob. It didn't with the Philips firmware. Does now though.

That's cool...hmmm....might have to go through with the bother of updating the firmware, but there's no easy info on the philips site these days....i'm sure i'll get around to it sometime, need to really as there's a few movies that are having issues playing on it...