Hey, so, lately I’ve been looking for a portable, region-free DVD player…Don’t know if I’ll end up actually choosing one or not. But anyway, I used these websites to do some (well, all) of the research. And they’re in Japanese. And it seemed like it would make great reading material. So here are the links:
- Original Google Search
- M1: probably my favorite collection of player specs and info
- DVD.co.jp: nice players
- Region-Free.jp: the product I saw sucked, but I haven’t looked at everything yet…anyway, it’s still good for reading
- Kakaku.com: helps you find some of the lowest prices in Japan
I know your way all over this web thing, but I just found a nice page o’ links that might come in handy for your Japanese websites roundup:
japan.alltop.com/
(lists sites in both English and Japanese)
It’s not in Japanese and for those in Japan it may be less useful if model numbers are different, but I always just go to www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers to look up models I’m considering. It will have an entry if there is a known trick to get it to be region free. Last time I bought a dvd player, I got one that was $30 at best buy and it turned out that it could be made region free with a code on the remote and it could also play PAL dvds on an NTSC tv. Unless it has become much harder to become similar players I wouldn’t recommend buying some really expensive one from sites that sell them. Also, on computers you just need the right software to be able to play disks from any region.
You probably already know this, but for those who don’t, VLC media player (free downloadable software) will let you play Japanese dvds on your laptop.
This might save people a few bucks: Most DVD players can be made region-free using certain key combinations on the remote. Search for your DVD player model and ‘region free unlock’ or something like that. I just unlocked my Philips DVD-622 last night. I don’t have any other-region DVDs to test with yet, but the knowledge that I could watch them is thrilling!
If you’re lucky enough to live in the UK, you don’t need one; Japan is Region 2, same as Britain. 😀