Place to unlock DVD player ?

When the TPC/ACCC gave that opinion in court, some years back, that region encoding was anti-competitive and therefore in contravention of Australian free trade laws, it stood as an almost-legislated thing for many years. so for many years, region-free or unlocked DVDs were plentiful. But the ACCC squibbed on their testimony and never came out with a firm ruling on this, and so we’re seeing a lot of backsliding.

I bought a cheap DVD player from Costco after doing the research, this player was actually manufactured to be region-free, and yet the bloody thing was zone 4. I’d never had an encoded player before, they’d all been region free. Luckily I found the crack and fixed it, but it seems the bright days that followed the ACCC’s testimony in the Sony case are fading.

KarlV said :

Sorry forgot to add; unlock will only be for DVDs. The “unlocking” did not enable the playing of overseas Blu-ray Discs.

Just to clarify something, with Blu Ray there are only 3 zones. Australia is in the same zone as Europe, Africa and the middle east. So an locked machine will play overseas discs, provided they come from a country in these regions.

KarlV said :

Hi Tommy,

When I purchased a new Panasonic TV and a Blu-ray player last year I was surprised to find it was Region 4 locked.

I called Panasonic Australia; they put me in touch with Tech1 in Fyshwick to get it unlocked (for free).

Maybe you can call Samsung and tell them that your parents have a lot of non-4 region DVDs and you want it unlocked through their service centre in Canberra.

If they won’t come to the table (to cover the costs), maybe contact Tech1 at Fyshwick and see if how much they will charge to do the unlock for you. Shouldn’t be much (I hope).

http://www.tech1repairs.com.au/home/

Good luck!

Sorry forgot to add; unlock will only be for DVDs. The “unlocking” did not enable the playing of overseas Blu-ray Discs.

We also have a Samsung (BD8500GB) DVD/blu-ray player/recorder. It’s a couple of years old now and none of the unlock hacks available on the net would work. The problem for us is playing UK DVDs (blu-rays from UK are the same region as Oz). Finished up buying a cheapie all-region DVD player from e-bay and now have both the Samsung (for Oz and UK region blu-rays andOz DVDs) and the cheapie for UK DVDs hooked up to the tv.

It’s a pain in the proverbial. We were told it’s against regulations to sell an all-region dual player for copyright reasons to do with US requirements.

Let’s know if you can get it done.

Hi Tommy,

When I purchased a new Panasonic TV and a Blu-ray player last year I was surprised to find it was Region 4 locked.

I called Panasonic Australia; they put me in touch with Tech1 in Fyshwick to get it unlocked (for free).

Maybe you can call Samsung and tell them that your parents have a lot of non-4 region DVDs and you want it unlocked through their service centre in Canberra.

If they won’t come to the table (to cover the costs), maybe contact Tech1 at Fyshwick and see if how much they will charge to do the unlock for you. Shouldn’t be much (I hope).

http://www.tech1repairs.com.au/home/

Good luck!

tommy said :

The unit is a Samsung BD-E8900A/XY. I found a few unlock solutions alleging to be for that unit, but they don’t work (ie they require a button on the remote that doesn’t exist).

Which button would that be?

A quick google appears to say the buttons you need to enter the code are Repeat, and the numerals. Do you not have a Repeat button? If not, it also says to try the Stop button instead.

Thanks for the replies – as pointed out as it’s my parents unit and they are very persistent about have THAT unit unlocked, I’m going the hard way about things. I have converted a few non AU region DVDs for them, but they just want to play them as they arrive.

The unit is a Samsung BD-E8900A/XY. I found a few unlock solutions alleging to be for that unit, but they don’t work (ie they require a button on the remote that doesn’t exist).

I’ll try out Maxtech as suggested.

Most, if not all, Blu-Ray players will play DVDs from all regions.

You can also try googling “engineers codes” for your model of DVD player.

Failing that, Prestige Electronics in Fyshwick might be able to help you out.

I didn’t think, unless it has an option in the setting of the player then it can’t be changed and you need to find something that can read the code.

Which bring me to a question I always have, why in the hell do we have region locks any more?

What make / model?