Blu Ray Player Modification

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old3eyes

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#569875 17-Jan-2012 12:54

scuwp: AFAIK all players sold by NZ retailers can only be multi-zoned for DVD playback only. I have never heard of someone successfully multi-zoning the BR disk player function.

Good luck.

Look at my link in my post further up this thread.. Zone free BD players can be bought in NZ..

Regards,

Old3eyes

JimmyH

2886 posts

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#570091 17-Jan-2012 19:06

Have just grabbed the region free firmware from the link provided. Will be near a JB next week, so at $99 I might just be inclined to pick one up.

So far I have avoided Blu Ray, although I have (2 blu rays disks that came with the DVDs in "combo" packs) because I want to have confidence that anything I buy legitimately from anywhere in the world (notably the US) will play.

Plus, region locking is simply treating your customer with contempt and just irritates me - particularly when it is only those of us who do the decent thing and buy legit disks that suffer, and pirated product isn't zoned at all. (and they don't have to sit through the unskippable trailers and over the top anti-piracy sermons either!)

Deev8

481 posts

Ultimate Geek

#570867 19-Jan-2012 15:23

old3eyes: Look at my link in my post further up this thread.. Zone free BD players can be bought in NZ..

And they only cost $1,049 - that is a lot more than most people want to spend on a Blu-Ray player.

JimmyH

2886 posts

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#570887 19-Jan-2012 16:25

And they only cost $1,049 - that is a lot more than most people want to spend on a Blu-Ray player.

$1049 is a ludicrous price, and I am surprised that they get takers. If I had over $1,000 to spend then I still wouldn't go with this.

Better to just buy a Zone B player locally (circa $100-150 for something basic, $300 for something good), and import a bog-standard Zone A player from Amazon.com (circa $US 100 plus shipping). As far as I am aware the Pannys and Sonys (ugh!) are multi-voltage, so all you need is a $9 travel plug. Bullet-proof solution for about half the cost. This is one of the options I was looking at before I saw the post/price for the Toshiba.

The other option was to purchase AnyDVD of DVDFab, buy a blu-ray drive for my PC, and just rip every film I want to watch to the drive of my WD Live Hub, dispensing with having a discrete player altogether. Still might do this....

golfpunk111

94 posts

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#570913 19-Jan-2012 17:41

I was going to do the PC thing with a blu ray drive since I built my own HTPC but going from other posts online the software for playing blu ray discs is limited and people have to wait for firmware releases to play the newest discs, so that put me off a bit. I still plan to get a blu ray writer just for the storage capacity for my videos, photo's etc.

Glad I could help some people out with that Toshiba though

Oblivian

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#570918 19-Jan-2012 17:56

and import a bog-standard Zone A player from Amazon.com (circa $US 100 plus shipping).

As long as your HT/TV supports both 50 and 60p

JimmyH

2886 posts

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#570953 19-Jan-2012 19:04

As long as your HT/TV supports both 50 and 60p

Good point, although I would imagine that most of them do now (?). Economies of scale mean that it's probably cheaper to design one model that has firmware/hardware that will work in all major countries, rather than having separate design and manufacturing (and other customisation) for each countries production run. Kind of like how our CRTs only worked on PAL when they were made here, but once tariffs were gone and we started getting sets from large international production runs then both PAL and NTSC support was incorporated. Same reason a lot of models have multi voltage - large production runs with one power supply (even if it's a bit more complicated) are cheaper and easier to manage that customising power supplies for different countries.

On the PC route, I wasn't looking at playing the disks on an HTPC. More a case of using AnyDVD or DVDFabPassKey to rip the film to a hard drive and remove the copy protection, and using the WD TV Live to play - which it (apparently) does OK.

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sen8or

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#570966 19-Jan-2012 19:40

No need to stress about zoning, simply buy from amazon.co.uk, good prices, free delivery and they get the bulk of the releases at a similar time to the us (or before in some cases). They are all region b so our own region, no need to stress there

jtbthatsme

937 posts

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#570982 19-Jan-2012 20:05

As I run a HTPC myself I just got a bluray drive for that instead of yet another thing to plug into the pc. As for cheap Blurays a place I buy off regularly (based in UK) has 2 for $17 on a limited range of Bluray movies (link below) also they're free shipping and those prices are all in NZ $$$ so 2 Bluray's for $17 NZD can't complain and I agree with others buying Blurays rom overseas is a huge saving.

http://www.nzgameshop.com/sale/2-blu-rays-for-17?utm_source=mailingmanager&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Nz+Wednesday+Special+Offers+-+18-01-12

As for the Zone Free question just ask any place your looking at getting a player from they should be able to tell you and if not ask who their repair agent is as they'd be the ones most likely to be able to tell you straight away. Better still as the old saying goes let your fingers do the walking and just phone them (or a little more walking and do as someone else suggested Google it).

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#571474 20-Jan-2012 21:52

sen8or: No need to stress about zoning, simply buy from amazon.co.uk, good prices, free delivery and they get the bulk of the releases at a similar time to the us (or before in some cases). They are all region b so our own region, no need to stress there

Not stressed - just irritated

No great need for Blu Ray anyway - with my eyesight it's hard to tell the difference from a DVD on a good upscaling player anyway. No compelling need to move anyway. Didn't upgrade to DVD until zone-free options were available, will take the same approach here. Until then it's the studios loss - wallet closed, with no blu rays purchased, plus scaling back DVD purchases drastically as it's an obsolescent format.

Just out of interest, has anyone tried loading the zone-free firmware onto the Toshiba JB is selling? If so, have you tried playing an out of zone Blu Ray and can you confirm whether it works?

hamisht

389 posts

Ultimate Geek

#571840 22-Jan-2012 11:34

I bought the Veon 2 Channel player that the Warehouse has for my parents ($74), and its multizone for DVD and Blu-Ray.

You have to change the Blu-Ray code manually though.. as there is no 0 setting like there is for DVD.

My Blu-Ray Collection

robjg63

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#571872 22-Jan-2012 13:16

hamisht: I bought the Veon 2 Channel player that the Warehouse has for my parents ($74), and its multizone for DVD and Blu-Ray.

You have to change the Blu-Ray code manually though.. as there is no 0 setting like there is for DVD.

Thats pretty useful information. I found the pages with the access code.
So one of the cheapest players is region free (well can be tweaked!).

How do you find the performance?

Only thing that is not so good (from the details on the warehouse site) is the 2 channel sound.
EDIT: Surely the HDMI would be full surround - it mentions DTS so it must be...

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Oblivian

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#571875 22-Jan-2012 13:20

If its anythink like the chip based media players, not quite. It may support multichannel, and downmix the output.

hamisht

389 posts

Ultimate Geek

#571894 22-Jan-2012 13:46

robjg63:
hamisht: I bought the Veon 2 Channel player that the Warehouse has for my parents ($74), and its multizone for DVD and Blu-Ray.

You have to change the Blu-Ray code manually though.. as there is no 0 setting like there is for DVD.

Thats pretty useful information. I found the pages with the access code.
So one of the cheapest players is region free (well can be tweaked!).

How do you find the performance?

Only thing that is not so good (from the details on the warehouse site) is the 2 channel sound.
EDIT: Surely the HDMI would be full surround - it mentions DTS so it must be...

Pretty good so far, my parents don't have a sound system, so I tested it out on my setup (Onkyo 605) before giving it to them.

Yeah its only 2.0 via RCA, but through HDMI it decodes the main audio codecs, DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD. It also has a network port, so I would assume it is BD-Live compatible (to far away from modem to test).

Apparently its the same chipset as the Multiregion Soniq that was in australia.. but I did hear from buyers of that, that when they updated the firmware it removed the region-free code. So I don't plan on updating the firmware on the Veon just in case.

But yeah, so far my parents have been very pleased with it.. playing all the latest films perfect.

Multiregion Code: Press Setup, then 8520. It will take you to a box where you can enter the DVD and BD region.

My Blu-Ray Collection

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