A Tiny Bit of Good News for Documentary Fans.....

[Junkdrawer]

A while back I posted this thread....

Help get PBS to re-release "Oppenheimer" the 1980 miniseries...

Well, it seems the BBC has heard our plea and you can but the DVDs on Amazon.uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oppenheimer/dp/B000FL79L2

It doesn't seem to be out at US Amazon, but many a history buff would love this for the holidays...

ON EDIT: WARNING:

This is a Region 2 DVD and will not play without some techie tricks on normal DVD players....

[Poiuyt]

1. Don't miss "The Day After Trinity," a GREAT documentary about the

evolution of the atomic bomb

[Junkdrawer]

2. If you order the DVD from Amazon.uk, you may need...

to set your DVD player to "Region 0"....

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.php

[KoKo]

3. Huh...what are you talking about?

:shrug:

[Junkdrawer]

4. See the first link in the OP...

It's all in this archived thread...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4276668

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. You need a region-free or hacked DVD player OR (good news)

the DVD drive of your computer.

There are a lot of British series and documentaries that I'd like to buy, and when I was in England this summer, one of the newspapers included a DVD of children's cartoons in its Sunday edition. The online manual for my iBook seemed to indicate that the computer would automatically detect the region of any DVD inserted in the drive and adjust itself accordingly. However, the manual said that the computer could switch regions only 5 times before getting stuck on whatever the fifth region was.

Well, this free DVD with the Sunday paper was the perfect opportunity to see if the manual was correct. I inserted the DVD, and ta-DAA, cartoons!

Since Europe and Japan are both Region 2, this means that I don't have to get a region-free DVD player. (I didn't get any DVDs in England, because I was running low on money at that point, but I have a trip to Japan coming up... :-) ) I can use the player in my living room for American DVDs and the computer for foreign ones.

NOTE: In order to combat film piracy (but not very effectively), DVDs are issued in different encodings for different regions of the world. North America is Region 1, Europe and Japan are Region 2, and I forget what the rest are. If you insert a Region 2 DVD into a typical American DVD player, even a high-end one, it simply will not play.

If your computer doesn't play DVDs or if it's your only means of playing them and you'd rather keep it Region 1, your only recourse is to buy a region-free DVD player. There are several online merchants that sell them, and the prices start at less than $100.

[Junkdrawer]

6. See the link at Post#2...

My 2 yr old $39 DVD player was able to be turned into a "Region Free" (e.g. Region 0) player by activating a simple hidden feature...

In my case, all I did was turn on the DVD player, punch a 4 digit code into the remote, and viola, a Region Select menu appears, with Region 0 being one of the selections.