In my continuing drama with trying to watch 36 TV shows from around the world for my participation as a juror in the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, I finally had to break down and buy a DVD player that can handle all the regions I have in front of me. (I have shows from Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Nigeria, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the UK, and the USA, of course.) And, since the studios and DVD makers got together and made up this silly regions idea many years ago, you can’t just watch a DVD from, say Russia, on the DVD player you bought in the US. That is… of course, unless you have a machine that can be hacked.
My solution? I bought a Philips DVP5960 DVD Player, which, along with all the other standard DVD player features comes with an HDMI output, has 1080i upscaling, can read DivX Ultra, and can take in USB input to boot. All very exciting, even if you don’t know what half of that means. This killer machine, only one inch high, cost me an amazing amount of money: only $78.93, delivered to my door in one day, by Amazon.
And the coolest part, the main reason I bought it? I was able to program in a code that “unlocks” the regions settings, making it able to read and playback all DVDs from all regions. It was a very simple operation (see this: http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks) that anyone can handle. And now, I can watch DVDs from anywhere in the world and not be concerned with being stopped for no good reason. That whole idea of keeping people to watching DVDs from their region – especially in today’s internet world of rampant pirating, is now ludicrous. The “change the region code” hack, by the way, is not covered in the manual that comes with the player — in fact, they mention that you will only be able to play DVDs from the region from which your machine was purchased — not true!
The Philips player is awesome and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a new DVD machine. Did I say “good old VHS” in an earlier posting? Not anymore. This was a very good purchase… and I was finally able to watch all 36 shows (some with multiple episodes, so I AM a little bleary-eyed as I write this). I’ll fill you in on the shows later, when I’ve recovered!
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DVD, DVD regions, DivX, hacking, Monte Carlo, Philips
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