Why I am a technophobe

[flemmings]

Of all the weird crapshoots, region-free DVD player and Chinatown DVDs of dubious provenance is turning out to be the weirdest. As in:

Of the 'would not play on my old region 1 player'

-- Death Note, the Japanese movie with Chinese subtitles, plays on USA setting
-- Rainbow/ 我心飛翔, mainland film with English subtitles, plays on Hong Kong setting
-- The Promise/ 無極, Chinese film with English subtitles plays on China
-- Warriors of Heaven and Earth/ 天地英雄, Chinese film with (I'm guessing) no English subtitles on this cut, won't play on any setting
-- qwerty's on-disk Running Out of Time film plays (on Hong Kong setting) but her eps of Uta-kata and Tactics don't play at all
-- Prince of Han, that does play on my region 1, played here-- eventually-- on USA but won't let me change the subtitles to traditional Chinese

and weirdest of all
-- region 1 NAmerican release Woxin won't play on any setting.

Comments

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Hmmm how strange ... you actually have to choose the setting in which to play? I'm as much if not more of a technophoe than you ... I had assumed when you say region free it meant that it will play anything uhmmm without having to fiddle with anything.

Hmm I'm sorry I cannot help, just commenting on the weirdness. Hmmm hope the hiccups get solved ... still you can play more than you could before even if a little fiddly. That's good. I think.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

That was my assumption as well, until my sister enlightened me. 'It won't play any of my DVDs!!!' 'You have to select region first.'

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

that IS strange because ours are region free, and we don't have to 'pick' a setting first. Oh dear.

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's weird! I used to have a region-free player and it never demanded any such settings from me...

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Yes, some DVDs detect the setting of the player when they are inserted and changing the region after inserting the DVD doesn't work.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

But 'some DVDs' are usually legit ones. You'd think bootlegs and copies wouldn't be encoded like that. Also, if my all region player is set to USA, why doesn't it play a region 1 DVD? And why do zan and sodzilla's players play everything, while I have to adjust region for every disk?

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

It depends on the dvd player. With my old player I had to select the settings. The new one I don't need to. When you go to buy one you have to make sure that you ask about it. Most of them nowadays should not need you to set the region. Some legit dvd's won't play on a multiregion player because of copyright protection. But I'm kind of surprised that woxin won't play. Most Chinese publishers don't bother. Only big companies like WB do.