Your best option is, as bono suggests, to either rent first or make sure you buy from a reputable dealer who will exchange problem disc's. You might want to get another player as a backup too.

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PS: Sony isn't top of the line either but they are good at playing all sorts of disc's and, in the last year or so at least, have a better track record than Toshiba (high end or not) and others...

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a) THE URANUS EXPERIMENT 1,2&3 - on all three discs, the shuttle cursor doesn't show up on the Main Menu screen so you don't know where to navigate;

b) INDECENCY 1&2 - both discs didn't have any sound in everything (movie, trailers and even menus) when they're played;

c) DOMESTIC AFFAIRS - the Additional Titles menu screen is all fuzzy when first accessed.

Now these problems are only present on my Toshiba DVD player because they are working perfectly when played on my brother's new Sony DVD player (which is a third-generation player). I agree with the previous posts that you should rent first because there might be some Private discs that might not be compatible with your RCA player. Also, you should also know that Private has been releasing Samplers as freebies in certain titles (SAMPLER 1 in CALL GIRL; and SAMPLER 2 in COMPUTERIZED SEX CRAVINGS) or Private themselves will send you SAMPLER 2 free if you called a particular Private hotline number found on a flyer in an old issue of Adult Video News. They will also be releasing SAMPLER 3 (with more than 100 trailers) as a freebie with their VIRTUALIA 2: THE FINAL TRUTH DVD probably sometime next month.

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Edited by - Planet Sex on Jun 24 2001

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Edited by - Bill Broderick on Jun 24 2001

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I bought a chipped Pioneer directly from the store (all-region, Macrovision off, tells RCE to sod off), and they got me a 1-year warranty.

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The reason being that Region 1 gets most (if not all) mainstream titles on DVD before other regions. People are buying region-free players in other parts of the world in order to watch Region 1 discs.

It is not possible to just walk into a store and buy a region-free player. You need to search for someone who is selling them or making the modification covertly.

In the US, the original Sony 7000 series players had a dip switch in them that could switch Macrovision and Region code checking on and off. This was changed very quickly. The other player that could do something without a physical modification was one of the original Apex players (I don't know the model). Essentially this was a DVD-ROM player in an oversized box. It had a hidden menu that could be used to turn off region checking and Macrovision. This too was removed from the market very quickly.

The other thing is that many DVD players from other regions are capable of playing both NTSC and PAL, while Region 1 players only play NTSC correctly. Therefore even if region-free players were available here, they would not be as useful as they are in other parts of the world.

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Of course, every case is different. Once, my brand new copy of RHPS started to pixelate at a certain moment. The EXACT point, all the time. I found out that there was a pubic hair - yes, a dargagobbit PUBIC HAIR! - stuck to the disc's surface. Cleaned it up, and bingo: problem gone.

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Do you have any idea whether this would still hold true with a Progressive scan DVD player?

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Of course, being a code-free player, it's no stretch to imagine that the disk spins at a different rate when set to R2. That's roughly what multi-system VHS players do.

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What I DO know is that I have a chipped Pioneer DV-333 (that plays all areas and basically tells RCE to sod off), it's hooked to a Sony Trinitron 29' thru the Component Video, and plays PAL DVD's perfectly.

How it works? Don't know. I works? Tried, and it did.

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Are all of the Region 4 countries NTSC countries? I don't know about Mexico, Central America and South America, but I would think that Australia and New Zealand use PAL (but that is just a guess). I would think that if a region covered countries using each of the systems, it would make sense to make the PAL/NTSC machines for that region.

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But, as far as I know, Australia is R-4 and uses Pal-G.

Thing is, my player is a Pioneer DV-333 bought in the US of A, chipped here, plays all regions and the output is NTSC.

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Do you have any link to respected document that would claim otherwise?

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The main advantage of sending just plain colours, instead something encoded to PAL or NTSC, is that you don´t need a true multi-system television. All required is that the television can sync to signals with either 50Hz or 60Hz field rate.

Though I´ve never heard of a TV on american market that would have RGB jacks and would sync to 50Hz, but wouldn´t do PAL.

If the format conversion is adequate, not like it´s usually been with converting players (problems with picture shape and lip-sync) this should generate interest among American shoppers. A power-buy perhaps?
The Denon utilizes the Sil503/Dvdo103 chip for de-interlacing, here´s a review with some similar products.

Edited by - absinthe on Jun 26 2001

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We only use the Pal-M to watch TV, cause all the programs are broadcast in this system, but all the home-theater based stuff is NTSC.

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