Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Recommend a good 4K 3D region free Blu-Ray player

This is topic Recommend a good 4K 3D region free Blu-Ray player in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 05-03-2017, 05:34 PM:

Please and thank you.

I just bought one of the last 4K 3D TVs from LG. Now I need a new blu-ray player, and we occasionally get disks from Europe so I'd prefer a region free player if possible. I know manufacturers do not make them that way and the players have to be modified, but I'm hoping some of you have experience with them and can point me to a good one.

Thanks!

Posted by Peter Castle (Member # 1997) on 05-05-2017, 12:16 AM:

If you want a 4K UHD BluRay player, there's only one way you can get region free on BluRay and DVD and that's Oppo.
UHD disks are already region free.
I have a Samsung UHD and it isn't region free on BluRay or DVD.
But for regular BluRay I'm sure there's more than the Oppo.
I have a Toshiba and an earlier Oppo that are region selectable (none are completely region-free).
Now I'm located in Australia, but I'm sure the modding of Oppos happens everywhere.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-05-2017, 07:10 AM:

Peter, I think a key part of Mark's question was the 3D part. This is going to be more difficult since UHD, as currently defined/implemented is not doing 3D.

Are the UHD-203s already doing region free? It wouldn't surprise me if the DVD part still uses the same files to make it "region-0" but the Blu-ray part has, historically, be an adapter board that plugs into the "mystery socket" and then one changes regions via the remote and reboot. I haven't popped a UHD-203 cover to see if that socket is still there. From the photos, I haven't seen it. It would be cool if it was.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-05-2017, 09:05 AM:

If 3D playback is important why not just stick with a regular Blu-ray player or Playstation 3 with the built-in capability?

Ultra HD can be pretty impressive, when you're watching well encoded content with true, native 4K imagery. The problem is 99% of what's available on the new UHD Blu-ray format is bullshit blow-ups from 2K. Worse yet, Hollywood studios are showing little, if any sign they're going to transition away from generating most of their content in 2K.

When I bought my 65" 3D-capable TV set a couple years ago I worried I was making a mistake buying what seemed like an obsolescent TV. I don't have any regrets now. Between the scam the movie studios are running with fake UHD blow-up discs and the pitiful efforts they're putting into regular DVD and Blu-ray releases I have little if any itch to buy anything new related to home theater.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 05-05-2017, 09:53 AM:

The Panasonic DMP-UB900 4K/UHD 3D Bluray player is currently considered the best 4K bluray player at the moment. It blows away the Samsung (which I had, and got rid of), and it is considered about the same, as far as picture/sound as the OPPO, but without the OPPO software glitches. The Panasonic upconverts regular blurays and even DVDs to 4K, and they look noticeably better on my LG 65" than they do on my other 1080p bluray player, as do regular bluray 3D.

The only downside is the Panasonic player only supports HDR10, not DolbyVision like the OPPO which supports both. On the other hand, HDR10 is a requirement of 4K standard if HDR is used, and there are presently no DolbyVision blurays available.

Unfortunately, I am not aware of any hacked for all region versions of this player.

As stated above, 4K discs are region free, but the players still honor the region coding for standard blurays and dvds. Further, 3D was left out of the 4K standard, so as of now, there are no 4K 3D blurays available.

There are some 4K 3D demos on YouTube, and they look really good when viewed with the LG TV's built in app.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-05-2017, 11:33 AM:

I checked, and indeed there are now both hardware (plug in board/cable) and software solutions out there for the Oppo UDP-203 and it does play 3D regular Blu-rays. Oppo now has released their UDP-205 player for the audiophiles.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 05-18-2017, 10:04 PM:

Good stuff. Thanks guys.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-30-2017, 02:26 AM:

Here's a thought -- I believe there a ruling by the courts (you know, the ones that the MPAA has in it's pocket), that if you have software or a "patch" that allows you to override any security protection code that the copyright holder embeds in their copyright work, you are in violation of the copyright law; i.e., the act of being able to override protection code is itself a violation. They basically outlawed any software that would allow a copy to be made by being able to strip off copy protection from DVDs. So wouldn't using a player that would let you play a disc intended to only be played in one region and playing it in an "unauthorized" region, be overriding a security protection intended to prevent you from doing just that? Would the person playing the disc be in violation or would the manufacturer who is making a player that can override the region blocking code intended to make discs unplayable in certain locations be in violation? Interesting.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-30-2017, 07:09 AM:

I can say that Oppo (and every other manufacturer we deal with) doesn't issue any players that are region free. It is strictly an aftermarket thing. So, I would think that the manufacturers are, somewhat, guilt free. These mods are often software or hardware in nature such that it isn't a matter of a button sequence that defeats the regions (it may be button sequences AFTER the patch/board is applied but not before).