BD-Live-capable Blu-ray players get offered in multi-region form

If you held back from snapping up a multi-region Blu-ray player the last time you had a chance, today's your lucky day. BlurayMods has finally returned to the scene, and it brought along with it some fancy new toys. The ICOS HD mod converts your current BD deck into a multi-region bundle of fun, and if you believe the seller, it's totally easy to install and operate. For those not willing to hand over €69 ($88) for the mod chip -- which functions with Sony's BDP-S350 / BDP-S550, Panasonic's DMP-BD35 / DMP-BD55 and Denon's DVD-2500 -- you can buy a pre-rigged player for quite a bit more. We'd say the euro-to-dollar conversion really rules these out for most Americans, but if things get much crazier, you may find yourself looking at a steal.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 7th 2008 9:07PM]

Alternatively you could just buy an LG BH200.

(for all those who said they only wanted a profile 1.1 player: LG decided to pi$$ off the owners & not update to profile 2.0, even tho it has all the required hardware & they promised it)

Even so it's clearly the best of all worlds, HD DVD & Blu-ray & DVD.
It's just a simple remote code for Blu-ray region changes
(which can never be locked out, it is the way the LG factory set their players at manufacture) straight out of the box.

Simple data CD burn & one-time play for SD DVD multi-region.

They're no longer made & now a real bargain if you can find one.

Most capable & best Blu-ray player by a mile
(since the April 08 firmware brought HD audio bitstreaming - April's is the firmware to have, it allows BD -R & -RE playback and is still up on the LG USA website ).

It's got to be a better alternative to amatuers messing around (or trusting someone else's skills messing around) with your hardware?

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 7th 2008 10:47PM]

Hmm, on their difficulty scale from 1 to 8 where 1 is "Idiot Proof" and 8 is "Insanely hard, you need Industrial machinery equipments", the installation difficulty for a mod kit for my Panasonic HD BD-55 is listed as a 9!

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 8th 2008 7:54AM]

And the BDP-S550 gets a 9 too, so not so easy-peasy

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 10th 2008 2:59PM]

The Panasonic chips are a little easier to install then the Sony chips. I ended up breaking my Sony BDPS300 player trying to install the chip. Although the panasonic wasn't all that bad. I was able to get it installed. Years ago I worked at a electronics repair facility, so for a novice I would not recommend trying it. For people in the USA there are a handfull of websites that sell the players pre-moded with a warranty. If you mod your own player or send your player somewhere for modification, your warranty is void. My suggestion would be to find a website that will offer the player pre-moded with a warranty.

Here is what I found:
Holland:
www.stegen.com

USA:
dvdcity.com
220-electronics.com
regioncodefreedvd.com
zonefreedvd.com
codefreedvd.com
there are many others.

Most of them will offer a warranty on pre-moded player.