Is there a source for a legal way to have DVD players that will play all region DVDs? The use is in schools, as for instance in foreign language classes. We do not want to hack, and we do not want to inventory different players set up for different regions, if we can avoid that.

It's all legal it was started because USA astonauts were given different Region discs to play and called down to Houston "we have a problem" a company man then radioed up a remote hack that would allow any region disc to be seen, they opened the flood gates to Region Free DVD players. One you can rely on is http://www.220-electronics.com made in the USA in the state of IL

Just one question: are these players legal, or do they require modifications? Or to put it less diplomatically, as my son (who needs the players) wrote in an email to me:

Would you please put a response up to the retard who posted on the thread. A point to make... ANY AFTERMARKET MODIFICATIONS are not entirely legal. If they were legal then SONY or PANASONIC or whomever would be selling them like that in the first place. Thanks....
....

If this were true the folks at www.220-electonics.com would have been arrested within 4 years. I bought the already mod JVC XVS500BK in July of 2001 a full 3.5 years ago they not JVC gave me the 1 year warranty.

I am not going against your sons judgement or use of words, just telling you of the hundreds of ways us smart guys at age 17 thought we were. The same thing happened every 10 years, I have come to the conclusion it will happen every year sound familiar Dad.

I was smart all my life at least I had a positive attitude and this helped me at age 38 after I became crippled for life after the tractor trailer I was driving was run of the road by a young 89 year old man. BTW I am still crippled but I haven't stopped learning or feeling less smart, tell your son my 58th birthday is this year, crippled or not I am going to continue watching my made in USA mod JVC Region free, after all it was the N.A.S.A. astronauts who wanted to see different regions of DVD they had been given by other countries. N.A.S.A. must have concluded there allowance of seeing other regions was a legal right, not having to tell the friendly country there region code discs were 'not' good enough for our USA astronauts.

If certain laws weren't repealed we all could be doing illegal things like owning Gold after the Government outlawed ownership of it in 1933. Back a few years the Government oulawed the illegal use of having a beer or a whisky, that led to Alphonse 'Al' Capone making a business out of it. Allow people to do something for thousands of years then take it away from them some people are bound to get what they think is not illegal.

Gold was given by a King to the baby Jesus Gold about 2,500 years ago, Frankensense and Myrhh are Essential Oils used in Aromatherapy. Do you or your wife own gold watches or wedding rings, all I have talked about were put as illegal to drink or own and they were proven to be utter nonsense. Cheers :)

This message was edited by grovvy on 02/02/05 23:11 ET.

Ernie, sounds like your son needs to chill out. Or perhaps join and discuss it himself. People use rude adjectives far too much in email....

Anyway.
All aftermarket adjustments are legal, they simply void your warranty. I suppose you could make an adjustment to some products that would make it illegal to use them, like putting racing slicks on your car when it is illegal to drive on the street with them. But the act of making the adjustment isn't illegal. Read below for comments on legality of all-region DVD players.

There are dozens of players that can play all regions. I have 3 of them in my house right now. Put in any disc, it plays. Malata, JVC, Philips, Cyberhome, Denon, Pioneer, anything from Hong Kong, etc. all make players that can easily (ie, no physical mods) play all regions. There are also plenty of players that can be modded to play all regions, see grovvy's link for some of those. If you want to read up on specific players, search for them in the hacking section of videohelp.com.

The "legality" is related to distribution rights. If you purchase an R2 DVD, theoretically you are taking away a sale from an R1 distributor here in the USA. You are also possibly giving money to a different distribution group as the Hollywood studios do not always handle distribution in other countries. And you may be purchasing a certain movie before it is released in your country, something the studios fight against. Is any of this illegal? You be the judge for yourself, I don't think so. But the US copyright code says that importing media for NON-PERSONAL use, that is, distribution use, is illegal. It specifically shows that importing ONE copy for personal use is legal. This code predates DVD and there have been no alterations related to the region issue. The regions are an MPAA and other media-mogul thing, there's no law I am aware of that specifically states you must only own/watch R1 DVDs. (R0 would also be legal no matter what)

Hi everyone, this is Ernie's son Neil.

I work in the audio-visual department at a college. I undertsand that for the typical home user, the legality of an aftermarket adjusted, region free DVD player is moot, who cares, who will ever know.

The problem is, since I am looking into purcasing these players for a semi-publuc Institution, they must be completely legal in every sense of the word. That means, even if it is legal to modify them, to buy them, to sell them, whatever, if it breaks or even bends ANY sort of copyright laws I can't do it.

By the way, just because you are not getting in trouble for doing something, that ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT mean that it is LEGAL. It simply means that nobody has bothered to prosecute you yet. And if you think that there is strength in numbers when it comes to breaking the law, ask the people who have been fined thousands by the RIAA for downloading music. Millions of people were doing that, and they still went after them. I apologize for the "retard" comment, but I stand by the point of what I said. If it were 100% legal in every way (which is what I need) then why aren't the DVD manufacturers doing it themselves. If you can answer that, then you can really help me out.

I appreciate all the info everyone.

Neil Bornn-Gilman

Neil.... Consult a lawyer. It's easy for most people to imagine what "should" be legal, and use common sense to figure out why. But there are many laws that weren't made with common sense, and many scenarios one could imagine where almost anything could be used in what would seem to be an illegal way.

The common DVD players you can find at your local discount stores are all sold worldwide, and as such can be configured to play any or all regions of DVDs. Clever hackers realized this, and with a little work figured out how the region can be changed on each player. This info is easily found on the web.

Your school district should have a lawyer who can look up the related laws for you. You might also be able to find them on the web, but I'd still get the lawyer's interpretation of those laws before proceeding.

I have a niece who lives in Estonia. I live in the USA. She MADE a DVD of her churches Christmas performance, and wanted to show it to us the last time she was here. But her DVD burner set it's region to be for ESTONIA, and not USA. To watch it, I set the Region code of my DVD player to match the one on her DVD. Common sense tells me she broke no laws bringing her DVD to the US, and I broke no laws modifying my DVD player to watch it. No one lost money. No one lost a sale. No one was deprived of royalties. And so on. But who knows what crazy rules have been written? I sure don't. Ask a Lawyer!

Dave B.

Thank you for taking back the retard statement Neil, Mr. Browns statement holds water, if you have to be absolutely sure hire a lawyer whose expertice is in copyright. In answers like these I always give you a way to prove it to yourself, in this case the N.A.S.A. astronauts. BTW you don't have to look up scripture to know that Gold was believed to be as valuable as Frankinsense or Myrhh. The Government of the USA taking away the ownership of Gold was assine. Mr. Elliott Ness enforced the no drink law but after prohibition he had Cherries Jubilee for his wife, this dish used flaming alcohol in it's preperation.

My best of luck to you Neil that your school doesn't have to pay out a lot of money to find your truly legal answer. :)

Good news for me! Found a new code for my last DVDp today. Now all 4 of my players can play all my movies.

Neil,
Unless I miss my guess, I think you may find many educational DVDs to be either R1 or R0, allowing them to be used easily by schools with standard USA players. Are you positive you have issues with regions? The copyright laws also make many more allowances for schools, allowing for educational use far more easily than commercial or even personal use. Although I don't think those really apply here, they don't seem to impact the region coding from my reading. But I'm not a lawyer.

Another choice is to simply purchase an R2 player to play your R2 discs. (or whatever region applies) Then you are purchasing both player and discs in the region from the distribution channel the MPAA is happy with, bypassing legal issues, if they exist at all. You would need to acquire the player from overseas. This may drive the price up a bit with international shipping, etc., but I doubt it would affect your budget that much.

Understand and agree, but very different issue here. I was never one of those people downloading for that very reason. I can point you to the exact laws broken by Napster, et al. Besides, MP3?? What a crock! Now, if there was a 24/192 5.1 channel PCM download site, I would be tempted to chance it. Course, an album would be an 8GB download most likely. Somewhat different than a dozen songs totalling 50MB.


I can't be 100% sure since I haven't completely researched this aspect, as I have with downloading/copying/theft issues as you mentioned above. I can tell you that in Europe, many DVD players come with all regions enabled. This is what enabled me to get my Denon player all-region capable. Someone offloaded the appropriate firmware from his machine and I loaded it into my nearly identical USA model. Now it's region-free. Why the difference in Europe? I believe the answer is licensing. The recording industry won't allow licensing to make/sell DVD players for the USA if you don't set the machine to R1. Here at home, they have more power to do this. In China for example, they have none. I could always be wrong.

Edit:
Did some more checking. According to DVD Demystified, a great resource, the bible of DVD:
"Some players can be physically modified ("chipped") to play discs regardless of the regional codes on the disc. This usually voids the warranty, but is not illegal in most countries (since the only thing that requires player manufacturers to region-code their players is the CSS license)"
--[Link: dvddemystified.com]

CSS is the unique copy protection scheme for DVDs. Any mfgr needs a license to put in the software to decode DVDs. A DVDp without CSS is a....CDp, I guess. I might add this (brackets mine), "not illegal in most countries, [including the USA]".

CSS is a form of copy protection, and when somebody in northern Europe broke it back in 1999, there were serious lawsuits and whatnot thrown about. But, regions are still not a "copy protection", and therefore are not under law. The licensing piece of regions affects mfgrs, not consumers.

A perfect example of what you said above, 'just because they haven't prosecuted...', would be the Macrovision defeaters still on the market even after the DMCA went into effect. I can't see how these are now legal, yet they are sitting on Best Buy's shelf right now. And I do NOT own 1. Or 3.

This message was edited by Spiky on 02/04/05 02:06 ET.

You're right, and I should not have actually quoted him on that, as he meant it for my eyes and did not know I would actually quote him. He apologized when it was really my fault.

But then, you KNOW that in business, between yourselves, out of earshot of the customer, you often use or at least hear terms that would really piss off a customer, especially when you are frustrated by not being able to do, or to get across, something that just seems so simple and obvious...

And then you gedt home and call your co-workers something else to your wife, right? ;-)

Yes, but regular movies in other languages are great educational tools and would only cost more if someone bothered to make them in educational versions. Can you imagine an American film company okaying a popular release to be published overseas for learning English, with R1 or R0?


Exactly the problem. Neither are we.

If it was me, I'd purchase the player myself if necessary and bring it to school for the few times I needed other regions. I can't see how this would ever come up in a court case or even in some sort of campus disciplinary action. As I mentioned before, you can always import a player from the UK solely to play R2 shows. This puts all the money where it is supposed to be in terms of distribution rights, follows copyright law to the letter and should clear the conscience of even the most fastidious person.

There's always VHS, also.

It is not a matter of bringing a DVD player to school when it is needed. It is a matter of the A/V department of the school buying the player in small quantities and having them on hand to check out at any time. Hence the pickiness about everything being on the up-and-up.

Thanks for your help with this, everybody.