Funai - Possibly Region Free?

[DrinkMore]

I am taking a wild guess here and making conversation, but I was reading over the CES news about the Funai players and it popped into my head that quite a few of these "Chinese" players are made region free and are then locked by special commands before being shipped to their intended destinations. It's cheap and effective. At least until someone figures out the code and unlocks them.

My question is, what are the odds of something like this coming out for the Funai players? Produced in such mass quantities - are they hardware locked or software lockes?

Might be interesting to look into. Is this a mandate of the "profile" criteria? Or is this optionally left up to the manufacturers?

[Seretur]

Not likely.

There are Scandinavian customizers making region-free BD players already, but I doubt anyone would officially produce them just yet -- let alone show them at CES.

Would be nice, though.

[jimmy242]

i dont think i would waste 300 on a cheap player might as well get a ps3 for 100 dollars more

[DrinkMore]

They are a Scandanavian company?

[WriteSimply]

Funai is a Japanse company. And it is much easier for Funai to make BD players as currently there are only TWO regions that are active: A & B. They can free up DVD but not BD.

As far as Scandinavian companies hacking a BD player, well how you spend your money is your prerogative. But if the copy protection schemes don't like it, prepare for a brick.


fuad

[WickyWoo]

keep in mind that setting your player to region 0 would likely set off BD+

[DrinkMore]

Damnit. My logic is all screwy. Oh well. I was just thinking out loud. I won't do that anymore

[Sylin]

Instead of making it region-free, it may have an option to simply change the region code. Years back I had a DVD drive in an old Dell laptop that allowed you to do this, and I've seen a few Apex DVD players that do as well. You simply punch in a code, and then assign the region #, depending on what movie you're watching.

[DrinkMore]

Originally Posted by ikcizokm

Instead of making it region-free, it may have an option to simply change the region code. Years back I had a DVD drive in an old Dell laptop that allowed you to do this, and I've seen a few Apex DVD players that do as well. You simply punch in a code, and then assign the region #, depending on what movie you're watching.

That will work too

[Frumious Boojum]

In related topic...

I know many of you have a separate player for each region... I'm considering on doing this at some point.

But, will there be compatibility issues with the new profiles because of playing outside of the region? This is really a question based on the internet connectivity. For example: Might some live content be blocked due to a Region B player being used in Region A (similar to how BBC blocks people outside of the country from watching some video on their website)?

I'd rather just have a region-free player... if only they were available.

[eat_me_cool]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

Funai is a Japanse company. And it is much easier for Funai to make BD players as currently there are only TWO regions that are active: A & B. They can free up DVD but not BD.

As far as Scandinavian companies hacking a BD player, well how you spend your money is your prerogative. But if the copy protection schemes don't like it, prepare for a brick.


fuad

There is a 80 euro hack. Its hardware and probably only for the skilled solder re-worker. From this Dutch company
http://www.stegen.com/product_info.p...oducts_id/1019

Its quite possible this could be a done in such a way as to be undetectable by BD+ or updates.

They also supply pre modded S300 and S500 players or you can give them an existing player to upgrade.

Another Dutch company. 75 euro kit

"This Modification is extremely hard to install"

http://www.jvbdigital.nl/jvb.asp?cur...itle&title=924

Here's why
http://www.jvbdigital.nl/download.as...Q.pdf&exp=m923

[WickyWoo]

I'm all for people region hacking to play legit product

Just not for disabling copy protection features

[eat_me_cool]

No copy protection featurs are removed.

Well, unless you install a SDI interface and can afford some seriously expensive kit to record it.