I have a new pet peeve...

I occasionally come across some sort of TV series which gets great reviews and piques my interest.   In THIS situation, it's a British show of some age.  So I  check Amazon to get the details (ASIN) so I can do a Interlibrary Loan to lay hands on a copy.  While there is a DVD of the show, it's only available in the Western European DVD format (#2).  Those of us in North America are just S.O.L.  Same problem exists for shows made in Asia.  

Maybe I should try to get a DVD player that plays all the different formats...

My computer will play most any DVD, and I also found that if you go to Walmart and buy the cheapest DVD player in the store, it's made in China with all the different formats built in.  Not sure if that's still true, but it was a decade or so ago.

Cue self-righteous piracy recommendation in 3... 2... 1...

It's not piracy if you purchase the dad's.  It's disregarding governmental regulations, and I'm fine with that.

In reply to Duke :

What's that you say? A simple solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in this day and age, except does exclusively because of antiquated, out of touch, and relatively draconian copyright and licensing laws?  (I guess I forgot the /s tag, I'm only having fun, I don't feel like dragging this argument out again)

But really, find the cheapest junkiest most off brand DVD player you can. They tend to play every sort of file and format, from NTSC and PAL to vcd and divx disc and everything in between, region be damned. At least they did, I honestly don't know the last time I saw a standalone DVD player.

Streetwiseguy said:

It's not piracy if you purchase the dad's.  It's disregarding governmental regulations, and I'm fine with that.

No one discussed buying the unplayable DVDs.

RevRico said:

What's that you say? A simple solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in this day and age, except does exclusively because of antiquated, out of touch, and relatively draconian copyright and licensing laws?

Intellectual and artistic property are still property.

No further comment from me on this part of the topic.  You and I have been down this road and neither of us will convince the other.

Isn't region codes more of a distribution control rather than copyright?

Cheapo universal player is your best bet. Sure, it's yet another appliance but probably the last one you need unless people start to hate streaming and a new disc format comes out.

that reminds me of when I really wanted a Panasonic Q. It's a Gamecube with a full size tray that could play DVDs. There was a company in Singapore (or Hong Kong?) that modded them to play all regions discs, but Sony shut them down when they modded PS3s.

In reply to Duke :

He said Interlibrary Loan.  Sounds pretty legit to me. AFAIK libraries don't generally engage in intellectual property piracy. 

I have had this problem with the original All Creatures Great and Small series. I got the German dvds and set an old laptop to the German/European region, whatever it was, to watch it.

Landlubber problems...let me know if you're ready to raise the sails matey! 🏴‍☠️

I have a cheap dvd player from Walmart that I bought at least 15 years ago. I have not used it for a long time, but it plays any region without complaint.

I remember way back when I used optical discs there was a way to reflash a DVD drive to change it to "region zero" so that it wouldn't refuse to read DVDs from any region. Ancient history now though.

I'd prefer to not spend money on an unknown series if possible--that's why I try to borrow them through the library, first.  If I really, really like the show (like "The Expanse" or "Justified") then I would buy a set.  But neither option is viable in this situation.

SV reX said:

In reply to Duke :

He said Interlibrary Loan.  Sounds pretty legit to me. AFAIK libraries don't generally engage in intellectual property piracy. 

It's not available via interlibrary loan because it's not available in this region.

In reply to Duke :

You said no further comment. 😉😂

You're right. No one specifically said anything about buying the unplayable DVDs. But no one said anything about copying illegally either. 
 

OP said in the first post that he was considering buying a player that could play all the formats. That implies to me that he was also prepared to buy the DVD (or properly borrow from the library).

You were the first to mention piracy. 

If you have a dvd drive on your computer you can use free software called Video Lan Client, or now it is just VLC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player

Lagit, legal, free.   The library I work at puts it on every computer.

EricM said:

If you have a dvd drive on your computer you can use free software called Video Lan Client, or now it is just VLC

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player

 

Lagit, legal, free.   The library I work at puts it on every computer.

 

 

IIRC this won't help because the issue is that the DVD drive refuses to pass on data from the disc at the hardware/firmware level.