region-free Blu-ray players... what's a good model?

[Jinzo Ningen]

Anyone here who has a region-free Blu player care to share positive / negative experiences. Also, recommendations for a solid model. I don't need every bell & whistle, but I'd at least like it to be able to remember where it left off on a disc. Also, since i know NOTHING about these units... do you have to do anything (programming or button pushing) to go between various formats??? Any bad things about region-free that 'fixed' players don't have to worry about??

There are so many good Blu & DVD releases that come out for the UK, but most never seem to see the light of day here... so I'm about ready to pull the trigger on one of these things. As such, I'd like to go in with some decent knowledge from others who have one, or at least are familiar with them.

Thanks.

[Gargantuan Gargantua]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FA ... UTF8&psc=1

I got this because I needed one to play blu-rays from other regions, needed the 4k and the media station stuff (netflix etc). I have noticed some bugs with it. It has crashed on me a couple times which I can't say I have ever experienced with a BluRay player. It works fine otherwise but if you were looking at this model I would maybe look somewhere else.

I need to get back to work but I think most Japanese Blurays now share the same coding as US blurays. Didn't realize that until after the fact. I am le-embarassed.

[Dai]

[The Shadow]

Many years ago (before blu-ray) I came across the website -- https://www.videohelp.com/ which could prove useful to anyone looking to go multi-region.

Multi-Region players really shouldn't cost an arm and a leg, as the manufacturers run DVD players (and now blu-ray players) off the same assembly lines. Outside of swapping around the included power cords, the only real change usually is to tell the firmware that today you're a region A player and tomorrows units are told they are region B. VideoHelp, has a section called DVD Hacks, it's a long running collection of "hacks" (button codes) that may allow one to tell their existing player to switch to another region or be region free.

It's worth a shot before spending a large chunk of money on a player. When looking at a new player if multi-region DVD playback is needed, be sure to check if the unit does PAL to NTSC conversion (although some HDTVs do support PAL signals, so I guess check you're TV's capabilities too.)

[canofhumdingers]

Hacking DVD players is pretty easy. From what I've seen, hacking blu ray players is not so much. Seems most people opt to just buy one that is built as a region free unit. I think OPPO players are still pretty popular for this.

As for the U.K. getting releases before the US, it does happen. I know Japan has a blu of King Kong '76 and Europe has a blu of Matinee, neither of which are available in the US. I'm pretty sure there are also a number of classic sci-fi and horror films available in Europe and Japan but not in the states. Germany has a blu ray of Ghidrah the Three Headed Monster.

Japan is the same blu ray region as the US. The U.K. Is not, but a lot of the titles there are region free and thus playable anywhere.