multi-regional DVD players

In the world of DVD players, America would like to think it's the King, hence giving itself Region 1 out of the 6 global regions. The rest of the world appeared to play along, but they really just ignored America's pretentiousness. Not realizing (or perhaps not caring) how much of a bastard they were being, the movie studios (20C Fox, Universal, etc) took the DVD manufacturers to court and prevented them from manufacturing multi-regional DVD players, at least they did so in the U.S. Thus anyone who travels regularly to other countries outside the magical "Region 1" and purchases legitimate copies of DVDs (I'm not talking pirated stuff, I'm talking about going into a real store in another country and buying an authentic, copyrighted DVD) on their return to the "Land of the (not so) Free" is forced to either play the DVDs on their computer, or purchase a DVD player that has been chipped by a third party, which voids the warranty but turns it into a multi-regional DVD player.

I suspect the other countries have done what Australia (appropriately known as The Lucky Country) has done, and that is they have accepted that they are Region 4 (well, Australia is), produce movies on DVD encoded for Region 4, but when the DVD manufacturing companies make their DVD players, they make them universal players, i.e, multi-regional players. So Australians (and people from countries other than the Land of the (not so) Free) can travel to other countries, as people often do, purchase DVDs in those countries, and return home to watch their newly acquired DVDs on their multi-regional DVD players, which come with warranties because they're legitimately manufactured multi-regional DVD players.

Now I have several movies from Australia, which I bought in Australia, and hence they're Region 4. For a while I was able to watch them on the cheap $40 DVD player (some no-name brand) I bought from K-Mart exactly for this purpose. The problem was, I had to repeatedly press 1 on the remote as the DVD loaded in order for it to play from Track 1, (2 to start at Track 2, etc) and once the DVD was playing the remote was useless, the controls were useless, no FF, no Pause, no Menu, nothing. The only thing that would work was the Open/Close button. This was fine for watching movies from start to finish, but I recently acquired the 2 DVD set of Lano & Woodley's TV Show, and when I pop the disc in my player and press 1, I get to watch the first episode on the DVD, which plays, gets to the end, then presents me with a menu of sorts asking if I want to watch the next episode. As my remote no longer works after the DVD starts playing, I cannot press Enter and watch the next episode. Repeatedly pressing 2 as the DVD loads doesn't work either, that just takes me partway into the first episode, as does pressing 3, 4, 5 & 6.

I contacted a couple of the DVD manufacturers here in the U.S. and discovered that the Land of the (not so) Free allowed the movie studios to make it verboten (I specifically chose that word) for DVD manufacturers to produce multi-regional DVD players, unlike The Lucky Country (and others) which recognize that the world doesn't end at their own borders.

To cut a long story short, I started researching multi-regional DVD players and found a plethora of third-party companies which chip and make multi-regional DVD players. The first website I visited had a lot of top quality chipped players available, but they had a dodgy shopping site. When I clicked the Purchase Me link, I was redirected to a website belonging to someone in Scotland. If I wanted to purchase a DVD player from someone in Scotland I wouldn't have gone to the website of a company in Illinois, USA.

Then I discovered that Amazon.com (yes, Amazon.com) sell multi-regional DVD players via partner companies. The beautiful part of this is you are shopping through Amazon, so your purchase is protected by their Buyer Protection Plan! Awesome!

Liz's birthday was a couple of months ago, and I bought her a flat panel LCD Monitor. My birthday is coming up real soon, and my darling wife went and bought me a multi-regional DVD player! I'd already picked out the one I wanted (a Toshiba model) and let her know I wanted it AND SHE BOUGHT IF FOR ME!!!

Now I can watch all of the Lano & Woodley episodes, not just the first one on each DVD!
And I can watch all the extra stuff on my other DVDs too.
Now I won't be so reluctant to buy some cheap DVDs when I'm in Australia next time :D

I love my wife :)