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Topic: Importing Region 1 DVDs

Michael Brown
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1522
From: Bradford, England
Registered: May 2001

posted 03-03-2004 09:04 PM

What's the deal with getting Region 1 DVDs to the UK? I know you can buy them from places such as ebay.co.uk. How must do you have to pay on top of the price of the DVD. There are import taxes and such??

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 03-04-2004 08:43 AM

Here is the information you need to know. The bottom line is that if the value of the DVD you're buying is under £18, you don't have to pay VAT on it (the rationale for this being, I guess, that the cost of collecting it is higher than the VAT itself). It doesn't really make clear whether that means individual items or the total value of the order. In practice, Gordon Brown has never demanded any money from me, even when I ordered six DVDs with a total bill of well over $100 from Facets in Chicago last year.

The only problem I've ever had importing videos was when I ordered a DVD of Grass. About a fortnight after ordering I got a 'phone call from the Customs people at Newcastle Airport. 'Would you mind telling us what you expect to find in that package, sir?', they asked. A printed label said 'Contents: Grass' on the package, and apparently they thought I was trying to import cannabis from Holland!

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Stephen Furley
Film God

Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002

posted 03-04-2004 09:57 AM

Leo wrote:

quote:

It doesn't really make clear whether that means individual items or the total value of the order.

Total value. You don't always get away with it on items less than that, I've been charged V.A.T. on something costing less than half that amount. On the other hand, I've not been charged on items costing much more. It just seems to be a matter of luck.

There is a certain firm I've ordered photographic materials from who use a pre-printed customs declaration on every package, declaring the value to be £17.99. Customs aren't stupid, they must realise this isn't the true value, but I've not yet been charged on one of these. I think other people have though.

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Stephen Furley
Film God

Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002

posted 03-04-2004 09:57 AM

Leo wrote:

quote:

It doesn't really make clear whether that means individual items or the total value of the order.

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Rob Butler
Film Handler

Posts: 91
From: Westford, MA, USA
Registered: Mar 2004

posted 03-19-2004 10:02 AM

Once you get a Region 1 DVD, will you be able to play it? I'd imagine that most Region 1 DVD's are NTSC.

Here's a link I found about DVD regions:
http://www.hometheaterinfo.com/dvd3.htm

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Stephen Furley
Film God

Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002

posted 03-19-2004 10:31 AM

Just about every 'PAL' DVD pyayer can also play 'NTSC' discs. I say 'just about', because doubtless there has been one that won't, that somebody will know about, but I've never seen one, and I've seen a lot of PAL players. All region 'NTSC' discs are not that uncommon over here, things like IMAX films, documentaries, and some music discs, such as the 'NAXOS' classical music ones.

Most British televisions made in recent years can handle NTSC, mine is about 15 years old, and it can't, but even then there are other ways of doing it. Almost all televisions, even mine, can cope with 525 line 29.97 frame signals, so there is only the NTSC colour problem to deal with. Almost all 'PAL' players can output RGB signals on a SCART socket, which bypasses the colour encoding broblem, and gives the best picture quality. Some of the more recent ones can also produce Y,Pr,Pb component signals.

If you have no alternative but to use a composite signal, most players, when playing an 'NTSC' disc, can be set to produce a PAL-60 signal, that is the 525/29.97 scanning remains the same as normal NTSC, but the colour is encoded with the 4.43.......MHz subcarrier frequency and alternating phase of PAL. About 90% of televisions can handle this. Unlike Laserdisc and VHS machines which can play NTSC material on PAL televisions by outputting a PAL-60 signal, no transcoding from NTSC to PAL is required; the component signals used on DVD are simple encoded into whichever composite colour system is required.

If you can't even handle a composite video signal, and have to feed into the aerial socket via a RF modulator, even that isn't a problem, the standard British UHF modulators for PAL system I with sound at 6MHz. will quite happily handle the PAL-60 signal.

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Dan Harris
Film Handler

Posts: 86
From: Bristol, UK
Registered: Jun 2003

posted 03-22-2004 01:36 PM

I could be wrong, but doesn't Japan (Also Region 2) use NTSC too, therefore necessitating R2 decks to be able to handle NTSC.

Michael, if you order R1 DVDs from www.playusa.com they *usually* ship them in individual jiffy bags, thus meaning if each package is under £18 even if you have bought more than one disc. You will find a lot of their discs are priced at £17.99 on purpose, and they don't charge for shipping. I've bought many from them and never been stung for import tax.

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Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God

Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 03-22-2004 03:01 PM

Dan,

Yes, Japan is also using NTSC. Although I do not have a multi region DVD player-yet, I do have a couple of laserdiscs
from Japan mostly mainstream Japanese films I purchased for my parents. Unlike DVDs, Laserdiscs were not restricted to region coding. If you ask me, I think region coding is ridiculous because of the ease of acquiring multi region players.

-Claude

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Daryl C. W. O'Shea
Film God

Posts: 3977
From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from)
Registered: Jun 2002

posted 03-22-2004 03:10 PM

As is stands today, region coding is fairly useless. However, I believe it was a good idea at the time. I don't think the major manufacturers at the time foresaw an abundance of multi-region players hitting the market. Did they expect some people to have modification chips? Sure. Did they expect that there would be manufacturers supplying multi-region players to the market en masse? No way.

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Alexander Smith
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 128
From: Walney Island, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.
Registered: Jun 2003

posted 03-22-2004 03:22 PM

I always buy films on region 1 DVD, because the film plays at the correct speed. Okay so it's not quite
but it's alot closer than PAL (25/24 ths too fast. the magic ~4%). My DVD player outputs proper NTSC,
and my usual monitor is clever enough to follow the 2:3 pattern and produce a reconstructed progressive
image.

After watching a film on 35mm it does seem peculiar to watch it in PAL at home, where the overall pitch
of the sound is higher.

Glad someone else mentioned playusa.com so I don't have to. I buy most of my DVDs from there. Those
few that playusa don't stock, I can often get from www.dc-dvd.com.

There are only a few people to whom I lend DVDs to, they also have multi-region players. That would be
because I supplied the hack to make them multi-region. ;-)

Alex.

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Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!

Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000

posted 03-22-2004 03:37 PM

Here's a minor but critical point. Japan and the U.S. both use NTSC, but Japan does not use set-up, i.e. setting picture black at 7.5 IRE. Japan sets their picture black at 0 IRE. So Japanese R2 DVDs on a properly aligned NA display will have their blacks looking somewhat dark or crushed. The converse is also true, US R1 DVDs on properly aligned Japanese display will have excessively high blacks.

The easy fix either way is a tweek of the black level on your monitor (brightness setting).

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Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God

Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 03-22-2004 04:08 PM

Daryl,

When Sony released their first DVD player, the DVP 7000 at the time the format was launched back in 1997, the machine could easily be changed into a multi region player by the consumer . It did not take too long for the studios to learn about this machine and they promptly demanded Sony to make modification to all unsold machines and those in production by having them remove the switching device consumers could use to deactivate region coding. I also believe Circuit City was also selling a inexpensive player a couple of years ago that was region free and they too were told to stop and sell only the modified machines . I have a friend who was lucky enough to buy a unmodified Sony DVP 7000 and played some Region 2 discs from Japan for me and the machine reproduced the images beautifully

By the way, I bought DVD magazine from the UK that came with a DVD sampler. Naturally it was coded for region 2 but I still made an attempt to play it on my various DVD machines. As expected, it would not play on all of them except my older McIntosh G-3 imac. I will not play or my new G-4 imac but it plays fine on the older mac. Can anybody tell me why?

-Claude

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 03-22-2004 04:33 PM

An open zone (region-free) DVD player we have been having great success with is the Marantz Pro PMD-930.

It is an industrial player so it is a bit pricey but it also has a 45,000Hour MTBF drive rating.

Marantz Pro PMD-930 DVD player

Steve

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Daryl C. W. O'Shea
Film God

Posts: 3977
From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from)
Registered: Jun 2002

posted 03-22-2004 04:58 PM

quote:
When Sony released their first DVD player, the DVP 7000 at the time the format was launched back in 1997, the machine could easily be changed into a multi region player by the consumer.

Not only could it be set by consumers, it could be set by the workers in their factories. It was a low cost way to set the players region with little effort. Unfortunately for them the method was obviously leaked to the public.

quote:
I also believe Circuit City was also selling a inexpensive player a couple of years ago that was region free and they too were told to stop and sell only the modified machines.

As we all know, region free players have been around for quite a few years. Of course Circuit City wasn't told to stop, just presured to. [Smile]

Regardless, region coding became useless more than a couple of years ago. It was more like 1998 when some people, including myself, started reprogramming their DVD players with EEPROM burners. [evil]

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Mark Hajducki
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 500
From: Edinburgh, UK
Registered: May 2003

posted 03-27-2004 04:28 PM

quote:
As expected, it would not play on all of them except my older McIntosh G-3 imac. I will not play or my new G-4 imac but it plays fine on the older mac.

Some computer DVD drives are restricted by region (and to a limited number of changes). In addition the software can also restrict by region.

quote:
I also believe Circuit City was also selling a inexpensive player a couple of years ago that was region free and they too were told to stop and sell only the modified machines.

I recently bought a DVD player (advertised as being region free) from a national retailer. On paying/collecting the player I was handed a sheet that gave instructions on how to disable the regional protection and Macrovision (using a "secret" software menu)

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