Hi All
Having decided to take the plunge and buy a HD player now that the format war is over, I contacted the company where I purchased my 55 inch (140cm) HDTV (sorry only 1080i not 1080p) and on the same day purchased a upscaling DVD player, which being in Australia is of course muli-region.
The question I put to them was what Blu-ray player should I purchase to replace my upscaling DVD player now that blu-ray is king.
The answer was don’t bother because most Blu-ray players are region locked for both the DVD player part as well as the Blu-ray part.
So this means I must keep my upscaling DVD player so I can play my many overseas purchased DVDs and use a seperate player for blu-ray and don’t bother to buy overseas Blu-ray discs unless you are sure that the are region free.
However I was then told that all European and english Blu-ray discs will be the same region as Australia so order your overseas discs form the UK.
I guess it is about time we once again stirred up the ACCC to encourage them to make a statement about Blu-ray players like they did years ago about DVD players.
“The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) warned that DVD players that enforce region coding may violate the Trade Practices Act. region code enforcement has been discussed as a possible violation of World Trade Organization free trade agreements or competition law.”
So come on people lets convince the retailers and manufacturers that we wont buy their poducts untill they are region free both in the DVD and Blu-ray parts.