About a month ago I upgraded our DVD recorder to a Panasonic XW380.  I now find that my large collection of (legitimately purchased) Hungarian DVDs won't play on this device  because of DRM-region restrictions.  Unbelievable considering my previous Panasonic was region-free.  (My bad for trusting the judgement of others, but I should have checked this before forking out several hundreds of $$$'s on a XW380.)  

Google suggests that you can only make the XW380 region-free if you buy a particular piece of hardware and software (and, presumably, the moon is in the ascendancy, and you hold your tongue in the right position  ....). Whatever.

I have two questions, dear Geekzoners, 1) is there an easy way to make the XW380 region free? and, if not, 2) what do you recommend as an equivalent region-free DVD recorder?  

(p.s. If you see a XW380 for sale on TradeMe in the next couple days, don't ask the seller if it is region-free!)