Books and DVDs.

[autumn_burn]

I went ahead and ordered the first season of Life on Mars, despite the fact that I don't think my DVD player will be able to play it. I'll buy a region-free player if I have to, but the guy at Best Buy seems to think that a lot of their models will play region 2 without any hacks necessary. Whatever - I'll figure it out when it gets here

Comments

[ilaifire]

if you have a DVD drive on your computer, VLan (it's a free video player) pretends region codes don't exist.

[autumn_burn]

I do have VLan (in fact, I'm pretty sure you installed it, so - thank you) on Faramir. It's partly why I went ahead and bought the DVDs. But I'd really like to be able to watch Life on Mars on my TV.

[tgunter]

The guy at Best Buy is almost certainly wrong- the DVD specification requires any licensee to adhere to the region code the player was sold in. Thing is the models are pretty much the same internationally, so a lot of DVD players have a code for a debug menu that lets you change the region. If any player is going to be region-free out of the box, it'll be an ultra-cheap model from a brand you've never heard of- they probably didn't bother paying the DVD license fee and thus wouldn't bother restricting playback to one region.

[crash_g0ddess]

I love Life on Mars. My aunt was taping it for me since she gets BBC America. I haven't gotten very far yet, but I've seen sporadic episodes here and there. Good show.

[autumn_burn]

I haven't seen a single episode yet, but I somehow tripped and fell into the Life on Mars fandom, and have since heard enough to be convinced I'll love it. And any show named after a David Bowie song can't be bad, can it?

Have you seen the trailer for the American remake? It really made me wince, but I know trailers often don't accurately portray the tone of a show. Anyway, I want to see the original first.

[crash_g0ddess]

They're already making a remake? The original one didn't even end yet!

[autumn_burn]

Apparently, BBC America is behind. It ended in England about a year ago. ABC bought the rights and are remaking it for this fall. Here is the trailer for the remake, so that you can wince too. (And then tell yourself that it probably won't be that bad.

[dragon_paws]

I love Life on Mars! You really get attached to it after a few episodes...

[autumn_burn]

It seems that way! And John Simm is adorable.

[tgunter]

After a quick search it seems the Coby DVD-224 can be set to region-free and converts PAL to NTSC (which is important and I forgot to mention). It's only $28 on Amazon.

[autumn_burn]

Thank you. I'm going to wait until the DVDs get here, and try a few things with my current player. But if that fails, well... $28 ain't bad.