When I got my region free player, I was pretty excited. But after paying an average of $10 for US movies, and $5 for Hong Kong films, I was shocked at the average of $25 for Region 2 films from the UK.

I have been doing a lot of reading of reviews for non-Region 1 discs, and am getting the impression that - in general- that region 4 versions are comparable to region 2. I really could care less about supplements - only care about the video/audio quality of the film.

The reason this is important to me is that region 4 almost half the cost of the Region 2 equivalent.

Does my analysis have any merit, or is it really on an individual basis that R4 is a reasonable alternative to R2?

Thanks...

I have also been leaning this way lately. I have about 11 R4 DVDs on their way, and bought 2 from codefree once.

They're usually exactly the same. You can tell by checking which subtitles the r4 has. If it has any european subs then the disc is most likely a dual region 2/4.

Quite a lot of R4 discs are duel encoded R2 and R4 discs with just a different cover, so often there's little difference - particularly if it is distributed by Warner in Australia. Just they tend to be released in R2 first. The only time they are different is on those rare occasions when the UK version was cut and it is a major release.

Being located in the UK, I tend to usually buy R1, R3 and R4 discs mostly... sometimes I can get R4 discs including postage etc... for 3 or 4 times cheaper than the UK R2 disc.

R2's have been getting cheaper recently though but the only real purchase I got was Minority Report because it was released before the US disc. If you like non-English langage films then R2 is sometimes the better quality option because of companies like Artifical Eye and HKL.

If you are after the very best then consult one of the many version comparison sites.