Buying DVD from Amazon.co.uk
 

Anyone has bought DVD from Amazon.co.uk before? Do they ship free to US, or do we have to pay extra? Also, what region free DVD player do you recommend to play the DVD bought from Amazon.co.uk?

Re: Buying DVD from Amazon.co.uk
 

You have to pay shipping. Look here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/cust...odeId=11072991
Also, if you're outside of England, you don't have to pay the VATs, so the items end up being a little cheaper than the listed price on the website.

Re: Buying DVD from Amazon.co.uk
 

Ordering from AmazonUK is easy. As was already said, you do pay shipping, but you do not have to pay the VAT which is included in the listed prices, so when you get to the checkout page, about 17.5% is deducted from the prices of the DVDs in your cart. I usually order several titles at one time to where the postage per-title works out to be about a pound each. If you order a half-dozen or more titles together, you can probably figure that the VAT discount + paying shipping pretty much cancel each other out.

Don't forget your credit card company will likely charge you a nominal "international transaction fee".


If you're only watching standard-definition material on a standard-definition (or other low-end) TV set, I'd heartily recommend any Philips player. Very easy to hack to region-free. Only downside to them is that unless you get an older model, all your PAL discs will be FORCED to standards-convert to NTSC (which is what many US customers would want, but is not desirable if your TV is capable of playing a PAL picture).

If you have a PAL-capable TV or a large LCD/Plasma set, I'd recommend an Oppo BluRay player for several reasons. One, they have a more advanced upscaler chip in them to make standard DVDs look better on a HDTV. Two, they can output a native PAL picture if your TV supports it, and if it doesn't, can convert to NTSC, and can also convert 50hz BluRays to 60hz if your TV doesn't support 1080/50). Three, they can be modified to be region-free for both DVD and BluRay with an easy-to-install add-on.

By the way, if your TV can handle the PAL signal, it is definitely worth the time and effort to get a player that can output an unconverted signal (PAL or MULTI mode). There is a very noticeable improvement in picture quality (NTSC conversions aren't horrible, but the pure PAL signal is much better).

Re: Buying DVD from Amazon.co.uk
 

What kind of easy to install addon ? Is it something extra that you have to plug in to something on the machine ? What model of Oppo player ?

Re: Buying DVD from Amazon.co.uk
 

Keep in mind as well, you can purchase a DVD player for your PC and use it as well. I have one DVD player for PAL and one for NTSC in my desktop. (You can buy a PC DVD player for as low as $15)

Re: Buying DVD from Amazon.co.uk
 

It's also worth mentioning that Xbox 360s will play region O PAL discs.

Re: Buying DVD from Amazon.co.uk
 

Thanks everyone for the information. That is very helpful. The only DVD I wanted to buy is Merlin Complete Season 3, and it won't come out here until next year (i think). Other than that, I don't think I have any other DVD in mind. For that reason, I guess I will wait and see before ordering just one series.


I probably won't need this part until I order the dvd from amazon uk. But just out of curiosity, is there any dvd player that allows you to play any dvd without hacking?

Also out of topic, from your own experience, what brand of DVD player is the best? Currently I have a Philips, but the machine sometimes makes weird humming sound and there are a few times my DVD was stuck in the player after I pushed the OFF button (yeah, the OFF was shown on the player while the DVD inside the player was still spinning).

Re: Buying DVD from Amazon.co.uk
 

Is the DVD that you ordered from Amazon UK region encoded? If not, you may be able to play it without modifying your DVD player. I use Magnavox for region 2 DVDs and it was very easy to hack by way of remote. I use a nice Pioneer for all my other DVDs. I was surfing one day and found a site that was selling my Pioneer model but it was hacked so it could play anything. Thinking about it, I thought: Can this thing play PAL DVDs that are Region 0 or Region All? I popped in a Swedish DVD (PAL - region all) and it played! It won't play anything with R2 or R3, however.

I see that you have a Philips DVD player. Dollars to donuts, it's easily modified to play all regions. What is the model number?

Re: Buying DVD from Amazon.co.uk
 

Why not just use the freeware VLC player?

Re: Buying DVD from Amazon.co.uk
 

Yeah, I don't see why you'd need more than one DVD player for your computer; every computer DVD player I've had will play region free with several different free media players (including VLC).