Region Free DVD

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  1. #1

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    May 2007
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    Region Free DVD

    Hi,

    I recently bought a DVD player from Fortress and was told it was region free. After getting it home I noticed it only has region 3 listed on the back. I only really bought it because I thought it was region free. I have over 100 DVDs shipping from the US I wanted to play.

    Is there any place I can go to get it modified at low cost or am I stuck with it?


  2. #2

    Join Date
    Apr 2003
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    Whats the model? Have you tried to put a region 1 dvd into it?

    Many players - despite the labeling (required perhaps for licensing reasons) will play multi-region dvds.


  3. #3

    There is a way of doing it yourself through the remote control but you do run the risk of frying your dvd player. It worked ok with mine in the States but my brother 'fried' his. You would need the make and model # and the serial # on the back of the machine. I would need to find my notes on how I did it but it took less than 5 mins.


  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by plexxx:
    I recently bought a DVD player from Fortress and was told it was region free. After getting it home I noticed it only has region 3 listed on the back. I only really bought it because I thought it was region free. I have over 100 DVDs shipping from the US I wanted to play.
    Have you tried just bringing it back to Fortress and explaining the problem?
    Depending on your accent, "region FREE" and "region THREE" sound a lot alike. As in many cases in China, if the answer is really important you need to phrase the question in different ways and ask more than once.
    As a side note, we have a multi-region DVD player that stopped playing US DVDs. We called Fortress and a repairman came out and re-programmed the thing. I strongly suspect our (at the time) 10 month-old un-programmed it whilst playing with the remote.

  5. #5

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    Take a look at this site:

    and see if there are many others who have purchased the same model as yours. With popular models, it's possible that someone has figured out a hack to remove any region restrictions. Sometimes this is done by pressing the right buttons on the remote to access the service menu, othertimes it might require changing the firmware through a disc.

    As saphireruby indicated though, you can certainly risk permanently "bricking" the player if you don't know what you're doing.

    Shop around and note the various models available to you. Keep a list, go back to the videohelp website and see if any corresponding models on that list has a sure-fire hack to free up the region restriction.

    The other alternative is to carry a few region-encoded DVDs with you to the smaller mom'n'pop electronic shops. If they have a player that's truly region-free there shouldn't be any problems in demonstrating that to you on-the-spot.

  6. #6

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    May 2007
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    Thanks for all the replies folks. I have my dvd collection arriving this week, then I will have many region 1 dvds to test with.

    Glad to see I have some possibility of getting around it if it does in fact only play region 3.


  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by plexxx:
    Glad to see I have some possibility of getting around it if it does in fact only play region 3.
    I think it's safe to say almost all of China branded DVD players can be made multi-region. Only Japanese brands have to be wary, Panasonic being one of the worst.

  8. #8

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    May 2007
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    Mine is a samsung, hope its OK


  9. #9

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    Should not be a problem with Samsung.

    Just google your model number and "region free"


  10. #10

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    We have a Samsung and it is multi-region.


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