standard dvd playback

[thebarefootkid]

Anyone considdering upgrading to bd (or more accurately WHEN to upgrade) like me must be worried about the playback of their standard def dvds. I have a collection of many hundreds of dvds and a large percentage are rare and special edition dvd from around the world.

i am from europe and so obviously had to hack my regular def dvd player to allow playback. now i know that blu ray is region coded and that the regions are slightly different BUT...

...if i have a foreign standard-def dvd will it play on a european blu-ray or will it only play on a bd player from that region? will i need to hack it and how complicated will that be if possible at all on these early gen players. This is of massive importance to me as some of my region 3 imports are very precious to me and i dont wanna upgrade yet if i need to keep my standard dvd player connected too.