View Full Version : Buying American DVDs
Everyone knows that buying videos in the US is a 'no-no' because they just dont work on our machines back home, but buying DVDs can work within limitations. Firstly you obviously cannot buy a US player to go with your DVDs due to voltage differnces. American DVDs will play on UK DVD players provided that the player is 'regionalist'. You can buy these at Richer Sounds or Scan.co.uk at around the same price as mainstream ones. Also, some film distributors have started have recently started further encoding to stop naughty Brits importing cheap DVDs to the UK. So you now need a regionalist DVD player which you can set to just one region. A specialist supplier such as Richer Sounds will give you a code to enable you to set up your player in this way. Once this is done, you should have no problem with playing US DVDs.
It is worth finding out if your player is the right type or buying one, as DVDs are cheaper in the US, films are out at least three months before the UK and there are many TV series available on DVD there which are not out on DVD in the UK ( eg Twin Peaks and Star Trek the Next Generation. P.S. I am not on commission from Richer Sounds - honest!!
Julie Carty
steph_goodrum
05-03-2002, 23:51
Julie
You mentioned everybody knows it's a no, no to buying videos, but that isn't correct these days. We have always had a video player for 13 years that played both PAL( European Std) and NTSC (US)on a PAL Tv.. We have recently replaced it with one costing £49 from Tesco which works equally well and our daughter is quite happy to be watching Princess Diaries bought in America, which is not yet available over here.
Babblin Boo
Ooopps!!! You can see how out of date I am. To be frank, I have not tried to buy a US video since I got stung on this one years ago. Obviously the technology has now caught up and you can now get a VCR that plays them in the UK at a reasonable price.
On the subject of DVDs, if you want a newly released American film but are not going out imminently, you can order them off by mail order from amazon.com. I did this with an Xmas present.By the time you have paid the VAT and import duty, which is on the freight as well as the base cost of the DVD, they are little cheaper than in the UK, but my daughter was able to watch her copy of Moulin Rouge on Xmas Day wheras it was not available in the UK until March.
Julie Carty
steph_goodrum
06-03-2002, 15:19
Julie
How can you say you're the one out of date when you're buying DVDs and I am replacing a video recorder? Although we'll get a DVD eventually, we have so many videos we still want to watch, we're waiting for a decent DVD recorder to come out at a reasonable price so we can "back up" our videos to DVD (well that's our excuse - whether it's technologically possible at a reasonable price or cheaper to replace all of them with DVd we haven't found out yet.
Babblin Boo
Lesley S
20-05-2002, 01:59
There are many multi regional players around now.
including those that tape - mine does.
The best place to get dvds US or Uk is www.play.com
and no I am not on commission either
Jamie-> and Lesley
You can play the US DVDs on computer DVD players. All you need is to download a hack off the internet. Both hubby and son have them on their machines and I get a nice big wish list of the son every time I go over to Florida.
jacqui
Lesley S
20-05-2002, 15:59
I have tried some hacks and they just didn't work.
Audio Genie for one.
We have compaq and seimens machines.
Do you know of any hacks for them?
Can you run a software dvd player alongside it ?
Jamie-> and Lesley