Sorry Old3eyes

But what I have been complaining of has been the DVD part of the player which is region locked and wont let me play my 100 odd overseas DVDs but will happily let me play several Blu-ray discs I have imported from the US and the UK.

I.m.h.o any movie that has run in the theatres for more than 2+ years already should be released on DVD or Blu-ray unlocked, but new releases that must still go through the different stages of theatre release in different countries could be locked if the Studios want to.

but having said that if the studios re-release a movie in High Def, that has been out for many years as a DVD the new release should also be unlocked.

Hi again Jesterrace

Its not so much that the DVDs and Blu-ray discs imported from the US and UK are that much cheaper (it is approx 10-20% cheaper to import once you take postage fees into account) Its more a case of availability, in Australia the total list of Blu-ray discs is approx 300 (DVD approx 4000), in the UK Blu-ray is approx 4-500 (DVD approx 10.000) and in the US Blu-ray is approx 1200 (DVD approx 25,000+), where would you get your movies from?

So why would you ever need region free in the US you already have the greatest selection of DVD/Blu-ray discs in the world.

I'm not TERRIBLY concerned about it either way. I built myself a very sweet HTPC with HD DVD and BD support, so, region coding means nothing to me. I just thought it would be pretty nice to have the PS3 go region free with a "simple" hack. That'd open it up for a lot of people. The big reason they use region coding is for movies that haven't premiered in theaters overseas. Notice that when HD DVD was still around, the release of Rush Hour 3 was delayed several months because it was still in the theaters around the world and HD DVD has no region coding at all. The BD was released a few weeks after it left the theaters in the US. So, while region coding blows, if it helps us get releases faster, so be it. It's not that hard to bypass.

That is not necessarily true. PLENTY of stuff gets released overseas before it's released in the US. Also, the UK has some tv show DVD sets that are either released in the US years later....or never. So yea, there's a reason to import stuff to the US at times. The US just got ID4 which has been out in other regions on BD for a while now. They're waiting on Master and Commander now, as well. Also released in other regions first.

I agree 100% with you. I waited until 2000 before buying my first DVD player here in NZ just to make sure that i could get it region free and RCE free out of the box.. Have a good Easter..

Hi people
I Tried to express my dissapointment to Sony support about not being able to play overseas DVDs in my Sony Blu-ray player and here is their reply

Dear Bernie,

Thank you for your enquiry regarding DVD Multi-Zoning.

Sony DVD players manufactured for the Australian market are guaranteed to play back Region 4 discs only. You will find that many of these machines are also capable of playing other region discs, however Sony Australia cannot be held responsible for any machine not being capable of playing back other region discs.

Regards,

Sony Australia
Customer Contact Centre

What do you want to achieve?

Region coding is there since 2001!!!

Yes _chef_ you are right region coding has been around for a long time

but recently most DVD players available for sale were Multizone
allowing those people living in backwater countries to be able to import older foreign dvd's and still be able to play them
when the country they live in is too small for the dvd to be released in their zone/region

If the manufacturers were willing enough to do this for the last 2-3 years
why the turn around now with the dvd part of the newer HD players
They know the people already have used multizone dvd players, so they are only
annoying their paying customers by going back to an older system

that's my 2 cents worth

You will most likley find that Sony is one of the main supporters of regional coding of both SD DVD and Blu-ray..