Multiregion BD/DVD - sub £50 decent brand

Hi guys,
Just to revive this thread, because, surely there's continuing interest in this sort of stuff...

Small headsup again.
DirectTVs.co.uk (part of the LaptopsDirect etc group) are currently doing the Toshiba BDX3200KB for £60 inc delivery, or 65 inc delivery for Monday (if you order today/tomorrow).
And guess what...you can make it multi-region for BD and DVD again :D

Whilst it's a *little* more expensive than the previous 1200KB I mentioned near Christmas, it's got a slightly better feature set, is 3D compatible unlike the 1200KB, and also doesn't seem to have some of the firmware bugs which Toshiba haven't fixed yet on the 1200KB.

Don't get me wrong, the previous player is still a bloody good buy and I dont regret buying the 1200KB, but this deal trumps it for the few quid more for anyone who's still hovering in the market.

Thought I'd mention it, as I'm sure I'm not the only one who's interested in multiregion BD players still :D
I've ordered one, and I'll give my 1200KB to my brother as a back to Uni present, there's a R.Sounds right round the block from him so he might quite like the warranty I got :D

It's also MEANT to play MKV, AVI and the likes, but with my experience of the BDX1200KB being pretty poor at that, I'll hold fire on even mentioning that as a 'feature'.

From Trusted Reviews verdict on the player:
With most of Toshiba’s Blu-ray rivals offering such eye-catching features as media streaming from PCs, cloud-based internet content and 2D to 3D conversion, the BDX3200 looks rather rudimentary by comparison. But that’s all thrown into context by the price tag – this is a deck aimed at budget buyers who are willing to sacrifice such cutting-edge luxuries for some good old fashioned disc-based entertainment at an affordable price.

And on that score the BDX3200 does a terrific job, offering crisp and natural 2D and 3D Blu-ray pictures, backed up by a decent operating system, solid format support from USB drives and a surprisingly comprehensive set of image adjustments.
Click to expand...
 
alexrose1uk said:
Small headsup again.
DirectTVs.co.uk (part of the LaptopsDirect etc group) are currently doing the Toshiba BDX3200KB for £60 inc delivery, or 65 inc delivery for Monday (if you order today/tomorrow).
And guess what...you can make it multi-region for BD and DVD again :D
Click to expand...
Ah, gowan then. I'm currently using my laptop's BD-rom drive to play Region A discs, but hooking it up to the TV each time is a minor pain in the arse. £60 for a branded multi-region player I can leave connected and use for R1 DVDs as well is too good an offer to pass up. Cheers!
 
Well the great news is mine arrived today and I've been able to run it through some paces to see how it compares to the previous BDX1200.
It is UNDOUBTEDLY a better player for us anime fans:

Pros:
-Bitstream now appears flawless, none of the dropouts/pops/stutters of the BX1200 (which I suggested switching to PCM to escape on the BDX1200 in a previous post)
-Just as easy to change region as the BDX1200
-The media centre (playback) now...well works, so you can watch H264 MKVs
-Supports Multiple Audio/Subtitles/Chapters/DD inside an MKV and switching during playback
-Reads NTFS formatted USB sticks, not just FAT32

Con:
-Initialises HD Audio (THD/DTSMA) a little slower than BDX1200, only really an issue for adverts etc
-Support for MKV subtitles basic, no styling/karaoke etc.
-No FLAC support

The BDX1200 is terrible/unworkable as a media player, despite the claims, I could never get it to play MKVs properly (it'd just got to a black screen or errored out).
I was worried the BDX3200 would be just as bad, but actually, bar FLAC support, for general playback it doesnt seem that far off my old WD LIVE. Certainly acceptable as a bonus feature, and excellent for a BD Player that cost all of £60, its a better media file player than my family's LG (which doesn't support MKV subtitles at all)
 
I've had a further fiddle, and the media player segment won't play ALL my encodes, I guess it's rather strict on it being BD spec or below (ie level 4.1 h264, and I number of encodes break the ref frames/level restriction. It didn't like a 1080p sample of K-On I through at it, but chewed through all the 720p clips I tried of Seitokai Yakuindomo, Kanon and a few others), that said, it's a free bonus on a cheap, multi-region BD player so can't complain. :)

And aye, I know where you're coming from Shiroi...on the other hand I can see why it's taking off, and who knows if there'll ever be hardware support for it :)
 
Mine arrived today, updated it and the code works to get into the region menu. I don't have any region A blu-rays yet, but I switched that setting to A and it played my AB BakaTest BDs fine.

Thanks again for the tip off Alex!
 
Mine turned up today as well. Took it out of the box and within five minutes it was playing Princess Jellyfish. Awesomes.

Also tried some MKVs and it played everything I threw at it with no complaint. A wise investment, it would seem.
 
Picked one of these up a few months ago after reading about them here.

It's great having so much flexibility to buy what ever format I want 8)
 
You guys are spending all this time on hacking region codes on Bluray players when you could spend that time building and sorting out your own HTPCs? My goodness.
 
What, you mean the ten minutes (if that) it took to download the firmware and type a four-digit code into a remote? There are many things in life I regret, but losing those ten minutes isn't near the top of the list...
 
I have to say that a HTPC would be completely redundant for me and the expense and setup would be significant compared to opening an Amazon box and sticking a flash drive into something once. I've bought two of these Toshiba players for family members and they've been very pleased!

R

Edit: Apparently my typing completely sucks.
 
theirsbailiff said:
You guys are spending all this time on hacking region codes on Bluray players when you could spend that time building and sorting out your own HTPCs? My goodness.
Click to expand...
Yeah, 'cause that would only require what, about an extra six-hundred quid, few hours (as opposed to seconds in my case, my player has a remote hack) of our time and use several hundred more watts of electricity while it's running?
 
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