Smart Blu Ray / Multi Region DVD – Real world experience please!

My lad is an avid DVD collector and wants to invest his (very) hard earned pocket money in a smart Blu Ray / DVD player. However, it must be multi region for the DVDs as he has some American ones.

Has anyone got any real world experience of buying one of these? We’ve found loads of units for sale that claim to be multi region, but when you rean the reviews they aren’t.

Thanks in advance,

Oliver_The_Spider aged 17 and 2 weeks.

Been a long time since I bought a DVD player, but most half way decent brands usually had some form of hack via the remote control to turn them multi-region. Worth googling?

Panasonic DMP-BD84 Smart BluRay Player MultiRegion for DVD Playback(DVD Side) https://amzn.eu/d/jiwYCLo

No expensive and reviews certainly indicate it can play multi region discs

Thanks, the above is a good case. Description says it is multi region, but there are reviews that say it isn’t.

That one linked above should be fine for DVD’s.

They are often only multi region for DVD I think, Blu Ray is less common

Ok. Online information is very conflicting and I don’t want him to blow £100 on something that might not work.

Just beware that the apps for smart players seem to be very poorly maintained (looking at you panasonic!), so you may be better off with a roku or firestick to do the smart thing.

Yeah, I’m beginning to think that the best solution will be to HDMI it to his laptop. Need to check if he can play a Region 1 on it.

I used to have a laptop where you could change region but it limited how many times you could do it, worth checking

I’ve got a separate DVD drive for mine. Will see how it gets on with a region 1 disc.

I used to have a laptop where you could change region but it limited how many times you could do it, worth checking

That’s exactly the issue i had with the player mounted in my computer, ended up working out how to reset the counter. Haven’t used it for about 5 years though!

I would get the one in the link above. It will play multi region DVD’s maybe not multi region Blu rays, it will play UK Blu Rays.

But it sounds like it is the DVD functionality that he needs.

If it does not play multi region DVD’s send it back because it is not what is advertised.

Most UK DVD players will either play off-region DVDs or can be hacked via a Vulcan Nerve Pinch on the remote to do so.  Off-region Blu-Ray is much less common.  This is why you’re seeing multi-region BD players which aren’t, they will be region-free for DVD only.

My advice to 17-year old me today would be “stop buying physical media, there is no value to it and it’ll only end up in landfill.”  I offloaded maybe 80% of my DVD collection – full of “collector’s edition” and “director’s cut” discs – to CEX when I moved house and the whole lot netted me about fifteen quid.  A wall’s worth of VHS tapes went to the tip several years earlier.  As a format, DVD is dead.

As a format, DVD is dead.

Except there are thousands of films and TV series not available on any common streamer, especially older films and a lot of classics. Plus if you have real favourites then many streamers charge more to watch it digitally to “rent” it via Amazon, Apple or similar then it is to buy the physical copy. An streamers have a shelf life for many films, they be on the service and taken off after 12 months, even if you have paid to have it.

As a household we have thousands of CDs and DVDs. We’d much rather have a physical disc than stream. We’re not going to change.

I’ve been buying BD of my favourite movies whe. I want to see them again. Quality is usually noticeably better than streamed on my 50” plasma. I’m not convinced UHD has much benefit at that size. DVD looks shit now.

In my experience most blu ray  discs are region free. And region coding has become less common over time. (Most recent discs don’t have any region marking. A fair few under ones are marked ABC (ie all regions).

Except there are thousands of films and TV series not available on any common streamer, especially older films and a lot of classics. Plus if you have real favourites then many streamers charge more to watch it digitally to “rent” it via Amazon, Apple or similar then it is to buy the physical copy. An streamers have a shelf life for many films, they be on the service and taken off after 12 months, even if you have paid to have it.

My point really was, if you must buy a disc then buy the Blu-Ray.  I bought a favourite film on BD just yesterday, it’s a 4k transfer from the original film stock.  (I’ve already owned it on VHS, Laserdisc and DVD.)  But that’s an outlier, the days of curating a collection are long gone.  Once of a time I thought my video cassettes would be worth something some day as I hoovered them up at 3 for £10 at HMV.

Yeah, I’m beginning to think that the best solution will be to HDMI it to his laptop.

Wait what?

HDMI is usually output only on laptops unless you know it specifically allows you to do this.

@cougar2 what scud said. Plus with online copies you’re not buying it, you’re only licencing it. So if the provider decides they’re not going to support it you’re shit outta luck. A better tactic is to rip it to a hard drive, dvd rot is real and will start to become common soon. Bluray is even quicker to manifest. Oh and online is typically compressed. Sod that.

Wait what?

HDMI is usually output only on laptops unless you know it specifically allows you to do this

Play it via his laptop and hook it up to his TV

dvd rot is real and will start to become common soon. Bluray is even quicker to manifest.

Is it?  They said that about CDs, the only discs I ever had issues with were cheap CD-Rs delaminating.

Oh and online is typically compressed.

You need to steal it from better sources. (-:

I jest of course, but I have little moral qualms over unlawfully torrenting something I’ve already paid actual money for.  It’s usually quicker and easier than ripping the disc.

Second hand PS4?  A mighty fine region-free DVD / Blu-ray player let alone a great games console!

You need to steal it from better sources. (-:

I was speaking of the non-tricorn methods.

Agree it’s probably easier but even that’s a chore these days. And as I have the material anyway…

On the rot I’ve had legit cds and DVDs “bloom” over the years. The dvd may have been cheap but the cds weren’t (but were EA so I’ll blame them)