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    Will an HD-DVD player act as a region-free DVD player?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Apollo13, Oct 27, 2010.

  1. Apollo13

    Apollo13 100% 16:10 Screens

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    I am traveling to a different DVD region in a few months, and like most consumers have a non-region-free DVD drive. I can change the region up to 4 times, at which point I'll be stuck at wherever I am then. I remember that HD-DVDs are region-free, and you can play any HD-DVD on any HD-DVD player regardless of where the disc and player are from. It occured to me that perhaps this goes to the next level as well: will an HD-DVD player play DVDs from any region? Or is the DVD-playing aspect of HD-DVD players still locked to a specific region?

    Also, would NTSC/PAL cause problems on a laptop if I were to try to play PAL DVDs/HD-DVDs on my U.S. laptop? I'm thinking this is only a problem with TVs, but better to check before breaking my LCD, right? :)

    Depending on the situation I may just pick up a HD-DVD player.
     
    Apollo13, Oct 27, 2010
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  2. Nick

    Nick Professor Carnista

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    HD-DVD's went out like 4 years ago :)
     
    Nick, Oct 27, 2010
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  3. Trottel

    Trottel Notebook Virtuoso

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    If you are talking about bootlegs, they are region-free.

    No, it is fine.

    Don't do it, even if you do find a laptop HD-DVD player for sale. There are some DVD players that are region free, there is firmware that can make some DVD players region free, and there is software to allow you to play other-region DVD's. Just look it up on google.
     
    Trottel, Oct 27, 2010
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  4. Apollo13

    Apollo13 100% 16:10 Screens

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    Nope, I'm talking about legitimate DVDs. I know it's really easy to strip the region protection (not from experience, of course :rolleyes:), but I'd like to not have to rip the DVDs to hard drive to be able to keep playing them after I return to my home region.

    Cool, thanks.



    I see VLC can play any region DVDs if it has access to the raw disc, but the firmware protection against that is what I'm concerned about. And the last time I tried flashing my DVD drive's firmware with supported firmware it failed, so I'm not too optimistic that it'll succeed with third-party firmware. I'm just thinking that since HD-DVD players are really cheap (even laptop ones), it might be quicker to just buy one if they are DVD-region agnostic. But if they aren't DVD-region agnostic, that doesn't help. Google has trouble with searching for this though, as anything dealing with "dvd" (even if it is HD) and "region" goes to DVD regions.

    Basically, if it's the same price as a regular, region-protected DVD drive, and less than a region-free DVD drive, why not? As long as they are region-free, that is.
     
    Apollo13, Oct 28, 2010
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