Saturday 9 January 2010

Not good!

This is so not good. So wrong. So very very expensive!

My sister was here for a few days at the end of last year and she fixed my laptop to now play region 1 dvd's. You may or may not know (or care) that the world has been divided up into several regions concerning dvd's. The USofA and Canada are in region 1, Europe is in region 2. This means that whenever you want to watch a dvd meant for the USofA in Europe, you have a problem. But since I have a clever sister...

After she'd 'fixed' my laptop, I immediately bought 5 Christmas films that are really hard to come by in Europe (ie not at all). And today they arrived! So, full of anticipation I got one out of its casing (and even they are different) and slid it into the slot of my computer. I got myself a cup of tea while it was loading and when I came back: nothing!

Yes, you read it right: nothing at all! Apparently I needed a decoder as well. So, I was about to get my credit card out of my purse, when I realised I had inherited a really cheap dvd-player from my sister when she moved to abroadistan. No point in paying if that dvd-player might actually work. I went upstairs to try it out and lo and behold: it did!!! I unplugged the whole thing because I so wasn't going to watch a great film on a small ittybitty screen when I have a large fantastic screen downstairs. I plugged it in downstairs and it still worked.

One down, four to go. Not counting the others that will surely be coming soon to an address right here in the near future. I had better win something in the lottery tomorrow!

9 comments:

  1. You are really into movies/DVDs, aren't you. You seem to have found a good solution.

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  2. Hooray ~ I'm glad you got it to work. What films are you watching, I want details about them. I watch movies all day long!

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  3. I love to watch movies. We have Netflix hooked up to watch movies instantly. Glad you had a DVD player that works for you. I have seen different region DVD's on Amazon.com, and been warned what not to buy per my son. We live in the USA - Sacramento County, California.

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  4. I was so relieved at the end of your post that you can watch them! Yay!

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  5. Glad you got your problem solved Mara - hope you enjoy your films. I bought a few while I was in Australia, believing that I could play them on our player (having previously bought a region 4 DVD and successfully played it here)but no luck! I thought about playing them on our computer but will speak to son about it first!

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  6. Hahaha! Yes, indeed, I know the feeling! We have a multi-region player, so we don't have to worry. However, my laptop will play one region only ... or to be more precise, it will play all regions for the first few times and then lock itself in to the last one played.

    Now, I can't remember how many plays I've had, or how many I have left, so I dare not play anything! LOL!

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  7. I had no idea that all DVD's aren't the same format. Doesn't it feel so great when you solve a problem on your own!

    Stopping by at Debbie from Just Breathe's suggestion and glad I did!

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  9. Hi Mara. I'm glad you got to watch your movies. i did not know there was different regions for a DVD. Why do they do this to us? Love your blog and will be stopping by again.

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