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I've been looking at region-free DVD players lately because I want to watch West Ham United DVDs, English sitcoms that will never make it in the US, and other such items. US manufacturers (or rather US media conglomerates) hate region-free players, and make it very difficult to get them -- most of the ones I looked at were around $300. Er, not an option for me at this juncture. Plus from what I could tell, I'd need a TV that would allow me to play back PAL (the European TV standard) rather than NTSC (the US standard).

But today I came across a DVD player that can play MP3 CDs, VCDs, etc....AND (via a slight modification made with the remote) be made into a Region-Free DVD player. In case you're not following my logic, that means all manner of British DVDs are now watchable, not to mention Japanese, French, Swedish and Andorran. Also, the player appears to automatically converts the PAL TV signals to NTSC so that they're watchable on American TVs. My interest was piqued by the aforementioned, but the testosterone started racing when I saw that Amazon has it on sale for $40 after mail-in-rebate. I just ordered one. Can't promise the region-free hack will work, but my research indicates that the odds are very good indeed. Worst comes to worst, it's probably worth the $40 just to play MP3 CDs, which I can't currently do.
| posted by Alex at 1:34 PM