Can you still buy region-free drives/decoders?

[Ian Bolton]

I bought my Creative Labs kit in November after hearing the rumour (via
www.dvdutils.com) that a law was being introduced on January 1st 2000 to
stop drives and decoders being region-free.

Does anyone know whether anything has happened relating to this, or
anything else regarding multi-region laws and stuff?

Cheers, Ian

[Richard Hopkins]

"Ian Bolton" <bolt...@cs.man.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3895B7B8...@cs.man.ac.uk...

> I bought my Creative Labs kit in November after hearing the rumour

> that a law was being introduced on January 1st 2000 to
> stop drives and decoders being region-free.

It's not a *law*, it was a stipulation from the DVD Video Group.

> Does anyone know whether anything has happened relating to this,

It has happened. Go try and buy a RPC-1 compliant drive somewhere and see
what happens. While there are still some around, they're getting like
rocking horse shit in comparison to the RPC-2 stuff.

> or anything else regarding multi-region laws and stuff?

There's no *law* that prevents you having a multi-region DVD player.
--

Richard Hopkins,
(replace .nospam with .com in reply address)
Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

Send all my spam to: duise...@reichstag.de

[Mad Brewer]

> It's not a *law*, it was a stipulation from the DVD Video Group.

I have to agree. Although phoning some of the people that advertise in
PC-PRO magazine, alot of these retailers are under the impression that it is
illegal for them to try to help/ still sell old players. You need someone
who still stocks older players they haven't sole yet (I bought a Hitatchi
2500 over the weekend that works with DVD genie.)

The other possibility is a "flash" to stop the amount of times you can
change the region see www.visualdomain.net.
Where you will find lists of players that can be "flashed" although you may
have fun getting one.

BTW The Pioneer A03 IDE will do what you want, the pioneer A04 won't.
www.edge-computers.co.uk may still have some of the a03's in stock.

goodluck!

P.S.
My personal beleif is that give it a few weeks and the new players will be
"hackable" somehow. Very little these days is impossible. and If I
manufactured a DVD drive, I would be happy for people to "accidently" find a
way of hacking it, if it meant "more" dvd drive sales!!

[John Howells]

Of course, if you just want R1 and R2, and you are keen enough, and have the
space, for £60 or so a pop you can always add a second DVD drive, and have
one for each region.

John Howells, Wigan, UK

"Mad Brewer" <ph...@mashtun.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:949401804.18570.0...@news.demon.co.uk...

[Stroller]

Or you can just buy a Pioneer DVD-114 & uplad the firmware update.

S.

John Howells <joh...@howells-99.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:877fai$tm$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk...

[Matthew]

i just bought my creative labs 6x24x dvd drive with encore card and its
region free!! woohoo it had the older firmware on the drive so no worries
there, the cards region can be changed with remote selector

and where did i buy it pray tell
Currys!

(only bought it from currys becasue i held them to a price promise with a
local retailer thus getting it a tenner cheaper than my local knock down pc
part retailer!!)

Stroller <stro...@bigfoot.fuckoffspam.com> wrote in message
news:8780m4$fda$1...@nclient3-gui.server.dtn.ntl.com...