Is there any (legal) way for me to see this movie?

January 29, 2012 8:17 AM

I have long been wanting to see one particular movie (Saving Sarah Cain, if that matters). The problem? Only the NTSC/region 1 version seems to be available for purchase anywhere, and Amazon/lovefilm and similar on-demand streaming sites will not let me watch the movie from my country. Am I really out of luck?

I know there are region-free players out there but of course it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy one just for the sake of one US movie.
Any other (legal) option I might have overlooked? It's just this one movie right now, but I've been wondering for ages how to access a greater selection of English-language movies than are currently available where I live.

It's been really frustrating to see the abundance of great movies to rent from amazon, and not be able to use the feature. Some of the movies I'm also interested in are from years ago, so it's not like I'd be cheating the distributor out of box office revenue, or something.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! I own a Sony DVP-SR100, if that matters.

posted by M. to Media & Arts (9 answers total)

You could buy it for $9.99 (or even rent it for $3) from the US iTunes store. All you need is a US-based iTunes gift card, which you can easily find on eBay.
posted by helios at 8:24 AM on January 29, 2012

You can hack your DVD player to be region free. I did this when I moved from the US to Cairo and bought a local DVD player, and I had US- and UK-purchased DVDs. You can google the model of your DVD player and region hack. Something like that.

I know region settings are meant to prevent illegal use, but I dont know if the hacking itself is illegal. You push a few buttons on your remote. In any case, I did it to watch legally-purchased DVDs.
posted by bluedaisy at 8:30 AM on January 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Here's the videohelp.com page on your player: http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks/sony-dvp-sr100/10115
posted by Gridlock Joe at 8:37 AM on January 29, 2012

Best answer: Have you ever tried playing a different region DVD in your player, just to check? We have a Sony DVD player (part of a surround sound system thing) and, although it has a sticker on the back saying it's region whatever and the instruction booklet says the same, it turns out that it will actually play anything you put in there. Yours might not be the same, particularly if there are websites with instructions to hack it, but if you can borrow a region 1 DVD to try and it worked, problem solved. If it doesn't work then you can try hacking it as above, in which case you'll want a region 1 DVD to test it out anyway.
posted by shelleycat at 8:53 AM on January 29, 2012

I believe that Handbrake yields a data file that will play anywhere if you rip a DVD. The legality of this varies by country.
posted by jeffch at 10:16 AM on January 29, 2012

Best answer: www.easy-hide-ip.com I figure if you're willing to pay them money, who the hell cares where you are located! I've only used the free trial, but that worked fine for Netflix.
Setting up your DVD player for multi-region is possible too, but it will take some work:
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks/sony-dvp-sr100/10115
Also, DVD players are like $30 for a cheap Chinese brand, which are usually the easiest to make multi-region as well.
posted by defcom1 at 11:19 AM on January 29, 2012

Best answer: If you want to watch it on a computer (or can stream its output to a TV), VLC (http://www.videolan.org) ignores region encoding
posted by Boobus Tuber at 12:41 PM on January 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Invest in a subscription to an anonymous web proxy service that gives you an IP address from an authorized country. The maker of the FoxyProxy Firefox plugin resells proxy accounts from multiple countries.
posted by bfu at 2:17 PM on January 29, 2012

Response by poster: Thank you all very much, these were all very helpful. I have checked out the easy-hide-ip free trial and it does indeed "unblock" the US-specific sites. I'm almost embarrassed to admit I felt too much guilt to continue using it, but I have great hopes for the videolan software, and am planning to buy the region 1 version now.

Thanks again!
posted by M. at 10:26 AM on February 3, 2012