Need help with a region free dvd player.

[Cidien]

I recently bought a Avia DVD-660 which supposedly plays dvd's for other regions. I just got a region 4 dvd in the mail today I bought off ebay and when I put it in the dvd player it says "wrong region". ??? Anyone have any idea if there is something I have to do to get the player to play another region or if the manufacturer simply lied?

Thanks.

[matthewmalay]

Can it play PAL? Maybe that's the problem and not the region setting. Have you tried putting in a DVD from another region that is NTSC?

[Japschin]

My dvd players are all region free but they can't play PAL. Same msg as yours, "Wrong Region" on some of the official Asian DVDs. Some sellers were nice enough to let me return it but others won't. Guess you'll have to check with the seller then. Good luck.

[Cidien]

Well when I bought it and on other web sites i've looked at it says that my dvd player can play NTSC and PAL dvds, so I have no idea what the problem is. =/ Now I guess i'm either going to have to buy an illegal "Hitler: The Rise of Evil" or pay $50 for one. Why can't the U.S. publishers for dvd's like this make enough to meet demand. =/ Pirates of Silicon Valley is another great example. They only released it on VHS and the VHS sells for a crapload 'cuz it's so rare.

By the way, if anyone wants a Region 4 hitler the rise of evil, i'll sell it to you cheap. =P

[matthewmalay]

Lots of DVD players can play both PAL and NTSC, the problem is that can your TV handle a PAL signal, even so you shouldn't be getting a wrong region message, the DVD should load but your picture will just be completely messed up but if it won't play PAL DVDs at all and they said it could try to get your money back. My guess is that they made a speciifc firmware version for North America and doesn't allow it to play PAL DVDs at all. The same thing happened with my Panasonic DVD player, it can play PAL VCDs (the image is a little scretched and cut off vertically, I'm guessing because PAL has more vertical lines than NTSC but PAL mpeg2 video DVDs don't work at all on it) but when I tried to take a bunch of PAL VCDs and put them together and author them together on a video DVD,I didn't re-encode the video or nothing, it wouldn't play without me having to mess around with the ifo files and trick it to work.

I bought this real cheapo DVD player, came region free out of the box and has a PAL to NTSC converter, not the greatest of players and the control really suck but a good spare player to have around.
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddet...wdeptid=11

I also bought a Philips DVP 642 for 100$CDN, made region free with a simple remote hack and also has a PAL to NTSC converter and it can play DivX/Xvid avi files

[Cidien]

Thanks Matthew.

[takumi25]

Some DVD players (especially hongkong ones) has some kind of a code in their manuals for you to enter so that it can play all kinds of DVD's. Chech the manual and see if there's something like that. Other than that maybe its the DVD disc itself that is defective.

[Cidien]

Well it's a 2 disc set, so I doubt it. =/ Both would have to be defective. I'll check about the code thing in the manual but I have a feeling I just got ripped off. On the plus side I recently read reviews about what a piece of junk it is 'cuz it wont play dvd's with even a slight scratch or at all. It's been playing my dvd's very well and I got to watch Martian Successor Nadesico finally. My old dvd player skipped WAY too much to even try watching MSN... hmm.. MSN... lol.

[Robojack]

Many DVD players, including brand name ones, just require certain button combinations at startup to bypass the preset region setting.

[matthewmalay]

Remote hacks can be found here

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks

[gubi-gubi]

Yeh my player needs a code input for the chip. Is your's chipped or is it made multi region? Do a net search and see...