[quote]“Technological protection measures employed by copyright owners to prohibit or restrict others from accessing works shall not, without legal authorization, be disarmed, destroyed, or by any other means circumvented.”
(see Article 80ter of the Copyright Law at t tipo.gov.tw/eng/laws/e1-4-1an93.asp).[/quote]
What about players that are sold multi-region out of the box, like my Shinco? Are those illegal, too?
Question is, will they actually enforce the law? Region coding has to be one of the stupidest schemes ever invented, and especially painful for us expats who are most likely to have titles in multiple regions (personally I have stuff from regions 1, 2 and 3) that we have difficulty watching just so that studio execs won’t have to worry about the tiny number of import titles sold outside of their licensed region. Ridiculous!
Also check out http://www.regionfreedvd.net/ to find the code that will make your DVD player regioni-free.
Bought a Gibson DV-009B: plays Pal and any region DVDs out of the box.
My DVD player just died, so is there any new recommendations for an easily hackable player ? Or should I just get another Pantiac ?
How about a Samsung DVD-E338K ?
[quote=“Big Fluffy Matthew”]My DVD player just died, so is there any new recommendations for an easily hackable player ? Or should I just get another Pantiac ?
How about a Samsung DVD-E338K ?[/quote]
My Philips DVP642K was easy to hack (see my comment above) and it also plays MPG4 burned straight on a disc.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF CRIMINALS. . . except for Mark and the others who can’t figure it out.
Just thought I’d let you know that Taiwan just enacted its own DMCA law on September 1 that makes it a criminal offense to mess with your DVD player so you can watch DVDs that you purchased in another region. You’re also a criminal if you make copies of copy-protected CDs or DVDs that you purchased (using software that’s widely available online), even if you make such copies for your own personal use.
Specifically, this is what Taiwan’s new law says (govt translation):
“Technological protection measures employed by copyright owners to prohibit or restrict others from accessing works shall not, without legal authorization, be disarmed, destroyed, or by any other means circumvented.”
(see Article 80ter of the Copyright Law at t tipo.gov.tw/eng/laws/e1-4-1an93.asp).
The law also makes it criminal to import, manufacture or sell any device for circumventing such copy or access-control technology. You can thank those bone-heads at the American Chamber of Commerce for pressuring the Taiwan lawmakers to pass such a law ( :raspberry: ). So much for fair use.[/quote]
So those of us who have multi-region , multisystem (PAL NTSC SECAM ) gear are safe, if we got our gear before 01 September 04. Most but not all good dvd players can be region chipped for around NT$600.
Good old Americans like to fook it up for everybody.
[quote=“Flicka”]My Philips DVP642K was easy to hack (see my comment above) and it also plays MPG4 burned straight on a disc.[/quote]I was looking at a few Philipses’es , But they problem with those is that they won’t play PAL discs on an NTSC TV (but they will visa versa) but I would prefer a name like Philips instead of some cheap gerenic Chinese one that breaks after a year.
You’ll not only want the ability to see your machine “region-free” (that is, region 0) but the ability to toggle between the 8 other regions. That’s because there is a kind of nasty newer version of region-coding on some DVDs that won’t allow them to play at all unless a region is chosen.
As I mentioned in another thread, this is only going to get worse with the new high-density formats like Blu-ray. I’m sticking to my original commitment that I won’t be seduced by the promise of better picture quality if it means having to put up with even worse DRM. But whatever - everyone is free to spend their money as they wish.
Two more shopping days till Christmas,
Robert
BFM, if you get one of the Pioneer models that has a working hack on Videohelp, I can help you set it to region 0. The Pioneers tend to go for TWD4000 and up, so they are more expensive, but mine (DV-366) has been rock solid. It does PAL to NTSC conversions fine (well tested with my UK Goldfrapp DVDs), and it will play even marginal burned media just fine.
You are referring to RCE which was brought up earlier. Despite all the hype about RCE, I’ve never actually had a DVD that I couldn’t play on my region free players.
I’m with you on this point. On the other hand, when they come out with the HD box set of Lord of the Rings, I’m gonna have a hard time resisting THAT.
For the more adventures user, get a modded XBox and use DVDX I believe,
that plays anything you want to, any region or any system.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF CRIMINALS. . . except for Mark and the others who can’t figure it out.
Just thought I’d let you know that Taiwan just enacted its own DMCA law on September 1 that makes it a criminal offense to mess with your DVD player so you can watch DVDs that you purchased in another region. [/quote]
HAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!
AHAHAHAHAHAA!!! 
Oh my giddy aunt!!!
“Society is to blame.”
“Righto Sargeant. Arrest the lot of them!”
Sorry. The easiest way is to bring some US or whatever discs to the shop and tell the bloke if he can play them all you’ll buy that machine. That’s what I did and walked out with the display model under my arm. (I did actually pay for it)
So. Throw away all your expensive Criterion Collection DVDs bought from Amazon. You are all criminals. And Amazon is an accessory for exporting them. Arrest Amazon!
I bought two pioneers, one a while ago, one recently. Good machines overall.
The recent one (at school) plays all regions fine, the older machine plays everything but PAL discs seem to be black and white!!!
Gives British movies something of a ‘classic’ feel…
Kenneth
I want to order a couple of informational DVDs from the USA. Are all DVD players installed in computers region-free? Will I be able to watch them on a friend’s computer (the DVD player in mine is broken)?
Thanks.
[quote=“joesax”]I want to order a couple of informational DVDs from the USA. Are all DVD players installed in computers region-free? Will I be able to watch them on a friend’s computer (the DVD player in mine is broken)?
Thanks.[/quote]All DVD-ROM players sold since 2000 are region-unfree. You can change the region 5 times. But you can often reflash the firmware with a region-free version (a scary procedure, not one I recommend). Your dvd player software also checks the region.
Find out the region free status of your DVD drive with this utility: remoteselector.com/driveinfo.htm
Look for firmware here: firmware.fr.st/
Set the region of your DVD player software with this utility: inmatrix.com/files/dvdgenie_download.shtml
You could also try this I just found while searching for you, I haven’t tried this: remoteselector.com/
Wow! What a stupid law!
I mean apart from all the law abiding citizens like myself who have many legally bought DVDs from the UK, and just want to be able to watch them… does this mean that every single English school in Taiwan is breaking the law? I mean they need to be able to play Cambridge English DVDs and stuff, right?
The irony is that by copying a DVD, you (most of the time) take the region setting out of it. I’ve heard of people having to copy DVDs from other countries so that could watch them on their non-multi-region DVD players. The law actually pushed them into breaking the law, when otherwise they wouldn’t have (if you know what I mean).
This whole region thing is a joke, IMHO.
P.S. I bought my DVD player before September whatever-the-date. 
I would not recommend DVD Genie. With that program you still need to find hacked firmware for your drive, and I’ve had it hang my system a few times. It is free though. There’s two levels of region protection on PCs, the first level in the drive and the second level in the software. New firmware only fixes the first, and DVD Genie the second.
These days I use DVD Region Free which defeats both level of region protection with no changes to your drive or software, and I’ve never had a problem with it. It costs US$40, but if you watch a lot of DVDs on your desktop or laptop, it’s worth it.
Didn’t realise it was such a hassle but thanks for all the tips.
[quote=“joesax”]I want to order a couple of informational DVDs from the USA. Are all DVD players installed in computers region-free? Will I be able to watch them on a friend’s computer (the DVD player in mine is broken)?
[/quote]
The first thing to ask is whether they are Data or Video DVDs. And then whether they are region coded. Usually only movies are region coded (to prevent people from buying movies on DVD before they’re in theatres in other countries). If it’s a data dvd, you’ll have no problem in any computer.
KenTaiwan98: Since your DVD player is multi-region, you might be able to change the output to NTSC. It’s black and white because the DVD player is outputting the PAL signal and your TV doesn’t know what to do with it. Look around in your DVD player settings menu
BTW, here’s a web site I use to find DVD player (non-computer) region/macrovision hacks. Usually, if you don’t have a Panasonic or Sony player, the hacks involve using the remote.
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks
[quote=“KenTaiwan98”]I bought two pioneers, one a while ago, one recently. Good machines overall.
The recent one (at school) plays all regions fine, the older machine plays everything but PAL discs seem to be black and white!!!
Gives British movies something of a ‘classic’ feel…
Kenneth[/quote]
AS your TV is NTSC any PAL DVD will show as black and white as it cannot use the better quality of PAL. PAL is 625 lines and NTSC is 525 lines.
The solution is to buy a multisystem TV or projector that can output in both PAL & NTSC. Youc ould also buy a convertor but they are around 5K so not really worth it.
All my gear is multisystem and multiregion so anything I buy from the UK, USA, Oz, or Asia works in gear.