Where can I buy one in Taipei?
I don’t want to chip it, just want one already done.
i did try to buy one on ebay, but the postage killed the deal.
Any thoughts?
Kenneth
any of those shops on/around chung hua road.
Apart from the major brands, most DVD players in Taiwan are all region. Ask for ‘quan shijie’. I got mine at Shinkong Mitsukoshi.
Brian
If you go to FNAC, tell them what you want. They will pretend they don’t know what you are talking about. Tell them you have DVDs from every corner of the world and if they can’t sell you a region-free DVD player, you won’t buy one. They’ll say, ok, charge you 300 NT extra to remove the coding, and won’t give you a receipt. My DVD player works like a charm for all regions.
Never had a problem getting a region free player here. The big shops might be more reluctant, but the independent shops usually sell region free by default.
Find a local friend to go with you. You can get what you want almost everywhere.
I think DVD player is preset to a region but always allowed switching it including region free. If shopkeepers want extra money, go away and find another shop.
By the way, Zhong Hua Road is not a good place to buy unless your ability to bargain is better than the clerks.
When I was in Zhonghua road looking for a multregion player, I was offered one for $6000, “reduced” from $8000. Bought the very same model around the corner for about $2300 :x
If you’re interested, it’s a Pantiac PV-770, can change the region by opening the tray, pressing setup, then ‘Camera Angle’, ‘Prev’, ‘Next’ to cycle the region until it shows ‘0’.
Also plays PAL dvd’s on a NTSC TV
I think you can get the same player under different names, but I don’t know the other names.
Sampo also makes easy to change DVD players, but to change the newer ones you need to burn a CD-R with a file on it, and put that in the player to change it.
You can probably get big name (and better quality) ones chipped to be regionfree, but that costs more, and you will probably lose the warentee.
Go to RT Mart and buy a Frigidaire brand for 2900 then go back to the store and let the service personnel plug it in and use the remote control to make it region free.
Some DVD’s have “smart region” detection. They won’t play in a region free DVD player. Better buy a DVD player that you can switch at any time to any region. Most key sequences can be found on the internet. Check this before you decide to buy a DVD player… that’s my advice.
[quote=“Koen”]Some DVD’s have “smart region” detection. They won’t play in a region free DVD player. Better buy a DVD player that you can switch at any time to any region. Most key sequences can be found on the internet. Check this before you decide to buy a DVD player… that’s my advice.[/quote]That’s RCE or Region Coding Enhancement, they won’t work in Region 0 players, or players that set themselves to the region of the disc (RCE discs are encoded region 0, but check the region later) Fortunately it’s pretty rare, I haven’t come across it yet. I prefer to have a player I can manually set just in case I come across one, but usually I keep it set on Region Zero.
Another thing I would recommend is to check when you buy it. Take a couple of DVD’s of different regions, and PAL if you need that too. And make sure it does what you need.
I buy DVDs like crazy and have never come across one that didn’t work in my region hacked players.
[quote=“kimichen”]
By the way, Zhong Hua Road is not a good place to buy unless your ability to bargain is better than the clerks.[/quote]
good point. the trick there is to have some idea what you’re looking for and price. either look on the computer or a local big-name electronics store. now you can go into any store and ask for a specific model and the price. i rarely get outlandish prices quoted to me if i do this, they know you can just go to the next store, but then again my chinese is good. you’re great advantage as a consumer there is that you can ask a bunch of stores about the price before you commit. generally prices there should be 10-20% cheaper than the big electronic stores. one thing, you have to ask if the unit you’re buying is “gongsihuo” from the local distributor, or grey market “shuihuo.” the latter can be another 10% cheaper or so but will not come with an official guarantee.
I think what you wanted to say is this: RCE discs are region-coded as any other disc. But RCE checks the player’s response to the question “Are you RC1?”, “Are you RC2?” and so on. If the answer is “YES” more than once the disc won’t play and you get a nice picture of a world map and the DVD regions.
RCE is not used by all studios and if a DVD player can play RCE discs in automatic mode depends on the modification, not the make or model.
I have a modified (mutli-region) Yamaha player and it plays RCE discs without that I need to change / apply any settings.
[In comparision some players need to be fixed to one region manually to ensure there is only one answer with “YES”.]
You can also buy players which are multi-region out of the box, usually the cheap (non-branded) ones with funny names like Pantiac, Shinco etc …
is this RCE stuff new or what?
i’m sure the MPAA or RIAA or whatever will push this standard to protect their profits. how do i figure out if my machine is region-changeable?
i bought mine at Shinkong Mitsukoshi too, and it was multiregion right out of the box.
thanks
RCE is has been around a couple of years, they probably don’t bother with it so much nowadays because it just doesn’t work. It’s nothing to with copy protection (which IMHO is a good thing) I think only Warner used it, and even then not often. If it’s changable depends on the make (or the chip if it’s chipped), what make and model is it ?
Oh yes, when you get a multi-region player, always find out how to change the region when you buy it.
3C has a great sale on DVD player now from Tatung. However, it is region coded… Anyone know how to get it uncoded. It’s model dv 236P. The demo model was all-region, but we took one out of the box, only to find it couldn’t do anything but Region 3. Picture was great on the demo model, and the price was $1999 NT only. I thought it was a steal until I found the sale models were restricted…
Suggestions?
Do 3C still have the DVDinfo brand? We got one of those for NT$2880 and it works fine for everything we’ve used, different regions, PAL and NTSC. The funny thing is that the instruction manual said it only handled region 3, so we took it back (not having any foreign DVDs to test out at that time), only to be told that was just to cover the legalities. I made them swear they would take it back after the 7-day limit if our DVDs came and they didn’t work - but they were right 
Anyway, my situation is only applicable if you happened to be leafing through the instruction book rather than using actual DVDs. But assuming their demo model works, you’d think someone related to the 3C chain must know how to get it done!
Ask the sales person to change it for you. It usually can be done with the remote control, inputing some code numbers. At least thats how they did it for me at RT-Mart where I bought mine.
An excellent site for changing your DVD player to region free, containing heaps of makes and models http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdhacks