Impact of no SD Multiregion hack on E1 ?

gedo

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What kind of impact do you guys think that the lack of SD Multi-region hack is having on E1 sales ?

I sat on the fence for a wee while and bought the HD-DVD drive for my 360, which is located in the family room. Very happy with it but too noisy to be a serious replacement for a standalone player.

Finally bought an E1 when the chance came along at the right price (£280) to replace my ageing Denon 2800 which doesn't do any upscaling but was a seriously good piece of kit.

Now I'm in the position of being unable to use the 'best' player I own to play over 60% of my SD collection. I knew that this was a risk when I bought it but I'm now becoming a bit impatient for the mythical MR hack. I think this must be having a negative impact on E1 sales and therefore HD-DVD takeup.

I keep reading in other threads that the E1 is such a good DVD player, which I can't deny, but until I can make it multi-region for SD it will always be a compromised player.

I haven't missed the point that the E1 is a fantastic HD-DVD player, which it most certainly is, but most people here will have a far larger collection of SD material and due to the history of multi-region hacking most of it will be non-R2. The slowish HD release scheduled, due to the format being in its infancy, doesn't help matters.

Thoughts ?
 
I think you have summed it up pretty well, with no MR hacking 'finding' it's way onto the market then there are MANY people who are holing back, myself included.
 
I'm also in the same situation. About 60% of my DVD collection is region 1. I have still ordered the XE1 though in the hope that at some point in the future a hack will be available. The only downside is that for now I will have to use my old MR DVD player and my R1 films won't look as good. But as with everything, someone will find a hack eventually.
 
Well, Denon got more money out of me instead of Toshiba. I bought a 3930 for £900 after reading the views on HD A2 upscaling from the US and decided not to wait for the XE1 as I have a nice shiny new home theatre room and the 52" screen needed something to play my rather extensive mixed region DVD collection on. The XBox360 will have to do for HD HDVD for now, even with the sound restrictions - after all the number of films I have is about 20:1 SD:HD.
 
Yes, I think it's about time that Toshiba 'accidentally' sent out those MR firmware discs to their dealers. ;)

Steve
 
Does anyone think that the lack of MR firmware has anything to do with the fact that the machine is designed to get it's own firmware updates from the internet, or more specifically Toshiba's servers ?

By not making firmware discs available they are effectively controlling new revisions. This makes is difficult to say "we don't know how a MR version managed to find it's way out" when they have total control of the release mechanism.
 
Guys I don't want to poor water on your fire but the one DVD player that could not be hacked for 2 years maybe more after the first DVD players were bought out was Toshiba. They have always had a reputation for excellent picture quality but hard to crack region code. I am pretty sure they were the last of all manufacturers to be cracked.

From what small knowledge I have, the fix of taking the drive out and plugging it into a PC and changing region is only half the job.
You need support for this from the machine firmware also to get it to work.

Added to this everytime the Firmware is updated on the machine the locations in code could change making it hard for the Hacker to circumvent the lock outs.

I think it will be a long wait.http://www.avforums.com/forums/images/smilies/cool.gif
:cool:

I am still going to buy one knowing this but I am not expecting a fix for some time.:cool: :cool: :cool:
 
I'm edging towards selling my Denon 2910 and 360 HD DVD drive to buy a Toshiba HD-XE1 but the lack of multiregion on the Toshiba is a slight put-off. However, I've only got about 20 discs that aren't R2 so it isn't a massive problem for me as I'd just play them on my Panasonic DMR-ES15 DVD recorder.

Still, it would be nice to have a MR hack and hopefully we'll see it.
 
You could always just make the discs region free :devil: 60% of our discs are region free, 30% are R2 and we have 3 or 4 R1 discs, so its not a big deal for me and my girlfriend, just need am HD-XE1 now :rolleyes:

Rooster-X
 
Could the lack of MR hack have anything to do with keeping the Studios happy and to show BR exclusive studios that HD DVD could be as *draconian... I mean as secure as BR to gain further support?
 
Could the lack of MR hack have anything to do with keeping the Studios happy and to show BR exclusive studios that HD DVD could be as *draconian... I mean as secure as BR to gain further support?

That is a very good point, and one I hadn't considered.....Would put Toshiba between a rock and a hard place, trying to please both the studio's and hardware buying public. Not a nice place to be.........
 
The lack of MR is the only thing stopping me at the moment...
 
Could the lack of MR hack have anything to do with keeping the Studios happy and to show BR exclusive studios that HD DVD could be as *draconian... I mean as secure as BR to gain further support?

I cant see why this would be the case. SD DVD are here to stay and their is no shortage of multi region players or priate copies for that matter out their for the whole subject of regional coding to be mute for SD DVD.
The only way that HD DVD is going to bring new studios on board (less sales) of course is if they bring in coding for HD DVD (which would cost them one of their major advantages).
I personly think that the reason why the SD DVD are coded in the player is because Toshiba doesn't want to hack the film industries of to much. Some of them are already hack of that HD DVD are not coded but to then add multi region playback for SD DVD to the player would be like rubbing salt into the wound for them.
 
If I had considered the E1 wouldn't be multiregion I would not have bought it yet. Made a rather rash purchase of it on Xmas Eve without thinking about multiregion capabilities.

I had planned to sell my Denon 2900 to recoup some of the cost, but can't do that until a hack comes out.
 
If I had considered the E1 wouldn't be multiregion I would not have bought it yet. Made a rather rash purchase of it on Xmas Eve without thinking about multiregion capabilities.

I had planned to sell my Denon 2900 to recoup some of the cost, but can't do that until a hack comes out.


Yeah same as me with regards to the 2900, But the lack of any possibility of the MR hack has stopped me dead!
BUT it is doing my noggin in not having new formats to play with, I am now looking at ps3 as blu-ray:rolleyes: as well as hd-dvd.

Toshiba really need to sort this out...
 
If the HD-E1 was available as multiregion or had a hack then i'd have bought one by now. Simple as that.

I don't have the space for 2 DVD players under my telly, so HD DVD will have to wait until a multiregion machine is out.
 
my cash is waiting, but mainly in case it drops to £269 :D

TBH I could live without R1 movies for a few months but I'm finding it hard to live without HDDVDs since selling my xbox add-on.

Plus its not the end of the world if I need a separate DVD player just for R1 - luckily I'm fairly easily pleased so a simple £100 jobby will do me
 
Plus its not the end of the world if I need a separate DVD player just for R1 ... a simple £100 jobby will do me

This is my approach as well, and if the Toshibas don't get multi region in the next year or two then going for another manufacturer, who's model's SD playback does do multi region, will be the next purchase.
 
I think they will be region free someday but when i don't know.

The way i am going to get around it is get a UK HD-DVD player for HD-DVD's and R2 and then get a USA PS3/Blu-Ray player for Blu-Ray and Region 1 DVD's :)

That why i should have my bases covered.
 
I think they will be region free someday but when i don't know.

The way i am going to get around it is get a UK HD-DVD player for HD-DVD's and R2 and then get a USA PS3/Blu-Ray player for Blu-Ray and Region 1 DVD's :)

That why i should have my bases covered.

if I hadn't been quite so impatient and got a Japanese PS3, that would have been a good option
 
I cant see why this would be the case. ......
.......I personly think that the reason why the SD DVD are coded in the player is because Toshiba doesn't want to hack the film industries of to much. Some of them are already hack of that HD DVD are not coded but to then add multi region playback for SD DVD to the player would be like rubbing salt into the wound for them.

Isn't that like what I said?
 
That is a very good point, and one I hadn't considered.....Would put Toshiba between a rock and a hard place, trying to please both the studio's and hardware buying public. Not a nice place to be.........

That's exactly what I was getting at.

Out of the two formats (Blu Ray and HD DVD), it appears to me that HD DVD has taken a more relaxed, consumer friendly attitude towards bringing their version of High Def to the public whereas the Blu Ray camp seems geared to pleasing the Studios and Electronic manufacturers first and foremost.

It would explain why Toshiba may be reluctant to release a MR hack, in light of Fox and Disney's stance on regional coding whilst they still remain the primary Blu Ray exclusive studios (barring Sony of course). We need only look at the Blu Ray titles from these studios to prove that they both seem steadfast in their resolve to control the release of international titles - although I hear that Disney has recently given some leeway in this regard. Even if it's a small gesture in the big scheme of things, it is in Toshiba's interest to incentivise these studios to bring them on board. As you say they are caught up in a difficult situation and only time will tell what strategy they chose to adopt and what it will achieve i.e. the alienation of the studios or the public.

An optimistic view would be that if Toshiba chooses to release MR hacks for all their current and future players and this helps to boost sales and mass adoption of HD DVD across the world, the studios must reluctantly give in to the buying public. The pessimistic view however would be that the buying public adopts the hardware but only play regular DVDs, in which case these studios have no case to go dual format since it does not affect the HD software sales and therefore maintain their exclusive support for Blu Ray.

Personally, I believe Toshiba should not side-step at this point, they should continue the momentum and take the risk by allowing support for MR hacks throughout their hardware - it's the right thing to do.
 

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