1. I never knew about it til I knew about these forums. :)

2. Money

3. Don't know how to modify them.

4. Rather just wait for Region Free DVD to come out.

A lot of people still don't even own DVD players (the horror!) and of those that do, few of them know anything about region coding. Of those that know about region coding even fewer like to tinker with their electronics to either 1) figure out how to duplicate what someone else has done to hack a player and follow the 'recipe'; or 2) tinker with the player to discover how best to make it region free and so on.

There's also the cost involved if you can't or don't want to hack the player yourself - at the Sampo fan website Area 450 there's a fascinating story of region free player sellers who charge a premium for what is essentially playing a burned CD in the player for the customer for a few seconds and collecting a $150 premium (in one case make that $350 extra for last year's model in the year before's case - a rare one of a kind region free DVD player). With some effort you can either do so yourself or get a friendly dealer or two to do the modification at no more that the suggested retail price of the DVD player

I'm not interested in a holy war over the relative merits of Sampos, Malatas, JVCs and other players (ie comments of 'you get what you pay for', 'my X is better than your Y' that people take as 'fighting words') but let me just say that the vast majority of people out there don't want to have to go to a lot of effort and expense to either see certain movies and TV series at home and/or set up a super duper whiz bang home theater system. But it's always funny how once they know a little about it and discover websites like this one how they will go to a lot of effort to complain about stuff - I'm definitely guilty of whining now and then about the availability of certain discs (or lack thereof) in the USA and of the ones I can get that they aren't cheap enough, much less the costs of the player, the TV, etc.

You get the idea ;) We all want free and effortless stuff and lots of it yesterday.

I didn't say there's a time change with NTSC. I was pointing out that by the previous poster's argument, there should be.

Unfortunately these things don't always work out that way. Sometimes you have to work at it a bit.

I read through most of these posts and I'm not sure about all the jargon used. NTSC, Pal, etc.

I was able to hack my player (which btw is General Electric...if that matters) to region free. Now my question is: Will this stuff play on my tv?

Sorry for the stupidity :D

...if "the land of corn" is located somewhere in the USA or Canada, YES, the stuff will play on your TV, provided that stuff is NTSC and not PAL ... so, you will/should be able to play Japanese(=R2) DVDs and Hong Kong(=R0 mostly - some are R3) DVDs, since these are NTSC, as is your TV...

. . . :o . . .

Ok, that's all I needed to know. Thanks!

multi region players is the way to go.

...yup!... he said, contemplating with great satisfaction his rows upon rows
of R0/NTSC, R1/NTSC, R2/NTSC, R2/PAL, R3/NTSC and R4/PAL DVDs ordered from the USA, Canada, Japan, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Australia...

. . . :D . . .

I think the average DVD consumer doesn't know or care about multi region players or the titles that are available. I have my Malata player, which I am delighted with, and know people who are in the market for a new player and I am trying to convince them to spend the little bit of extra cash to get this player. But they don't really seem too interested when I tell them. Maybe they don't know or care about all the titles available to them from overseas stores? They may not think it's worth the time or effort to try to order a region free player and get DVDs from overseas because they may not think they would really benefit all that much from them. I've had people tell me they would wait for the US releases on those titles.