Region free Blu-ray deck recommendations?

December 23, 2022 11:11 AM

I need to buy a region-free Blu-ray player for work, and am seeking recommendations so I'm not selecting one entirely at random. Since it's for work, I will probably have to purchase it through Amazon instead of the more specialty kind of place I would personally prefer.

We have a Sony BDP 3406/F7 that arrived entirely region-free, but it was given to us as a gift, and I think was originally purchased on the grey market. And its region-free-ness has abruptly stopped (no idea why), at least where Blu-rays are concerned, so we're stuck until we can find something else.

Is there anything you'd recommend that I can get via someplace like Amazon? Region-free for Blu-rays is a must.

Many thanks!

posted by theatro to Technology (2 answers total)

Before you buy a new one, you should do some searching online for the procedure to region-unlock your existing player. You might just need to do it again.

In my experience, most players can be made region-free with a few remote/button steps. Here's what I found about the Sony machines you describe.
posted by yellowcandy at 11:24 AM on December 23, 2022

Response by poster: I had hope about a keypad code, because that's what I used to do with my own players back in the day for DVD regions. But, no luck for this one, at least not for the Blu-ray regions.

The only one that had any effect was the 314159 one, and that brought up a screen of numbered "USB Test Case" lines:

USB Test Case [1]: Test SE0 NAK
USB Test Case [2]: Test J
USB Test Case [3]: Test K
USB Test Case [4]: Test packet
USB Test Case [5]: Force enable
USB Test Case [6]: Suspend to wait 15s then resume
USB Test Case [7]: Wait 15s then perform setup phase

I could scroll down to any of these and select it, but none affected the playback of a Region B Blu-ray. If it's having any effect on the USB input, which is what it looks like, I wouldn't really know how to test that, alas.
posted by theatro at 12:39 PM on December 23, 2022