My sister and her husband returned from their honeymoon about two weeks ago. They spent part of their trip in Prague and brought home a comercially-bought DVD with highlights of the city. The problem is that the DVD is Region 2 encoded. This means it can be played on DVD players sold in Europe, Japan, South Africa, and the Middle East, but not North America. Last time I spoke to her she said, “Maybe we can send this DVD to someone we know in Europe” so they can watch it.
There is another alternative. If you live in North America and you have DVDs from outside Region 1, you could buy a “Region Free” DVD player. The problem is that the electronics industry is more or less compelled to ship DVD players that are Region 1 by default, but many of these players are not Region 1-specific.
A good example of such a player is the
Philips DVP642. It’s an inexpensive progressive-scan DVD player that handles a lot of different formats, including:
- DVD,DVD+RW, Mpeg4, Dvix4 video, and
- CD and MP3 audio formats.
The DVP642 rocketed to the number 1 on the Amazon.com Sales Rank chart this week on the basis of articles like the one that appeared Wednesday on Gizmodo. Among other things, the article says, “it can be region unlocked with the remote–no firmware hack needed.”
I started looking looking into what it took to unlock the DVP642 so it will play DVDs from any region by doing searches like “DVP642 region” on Google, I found a lot of information. Most of the information on the web indicates that the DVP642 can be programmed to play disks from any region simply by using the remote to enter a three-digit code, press OK, and then selecting “from what appears to be several different model numbers and region settings”.
Since there is so much information on the web indicating that the DVP642 is a “region-free” DVD player, I would first try playing a non-Region 1 DVD without making any changes. If that didn’t work, read your DVD player’s manual and see if region settings are documented. If not, refer to region reprogramming resources on the Internet like the ones I’ve discussed here.
Keep in mind that information like this is generally coming from other DVP642 owners and non from Philips itself. I doubt that you will be able to get phone technical support to help you if you try one of these techniques and lose your original configuration. (When in doubt, take notes.)
It’s kind of scary, but the more I look at the way most electronics companies have implemented DVD region limitation, the more I am reminded of the way mobile phone carriers lock handsets to make it difficult for customers to switch carriers.