This situation leads one to question Fox's intentions. They must know exactly what they're doing by making the discs region 2. Does anybody know if Fox has any interest in a company or companies that make real (ie not hacked) region free players?

Region 1 DVDs will not be released until US syndication plans are decided on by Fox and/or Groenig (whoever owns syndication rights). Although they won't have the optimum number of episodes to go into syndication (100), making the right deal can mean a big chunk of money. Releasing the DVD would negativly effect their asking price or kill a syndication deal altogether. If they can't sell the show (and low ratings and only 78 episodes make that a real possibility) expect a Region 1 DVD announcement to soon follow.

For region free players check http://www.vcdhelp.com ("DVD players" and "DVD hacks" sections). Many DVD players can be easily made region free, i.e. throught pressing a combination of buttons of the remote. For istance I live in a "Region-2 Country" and I own a Mustek V520 DVD standalone player. It is supposed to be R2 only compatible but I've unlocked it by entering in a special menu which allowed me to deactivate regional protecion. That's all: now I can play every DVD on Earth :)

Now this is just ridiculous. Fox Broadcasting, of the major worldwide broadcasting company appears to have no knowledge at all of the technology that they're selling. A) They first claim that they have no idea what Regoin coding means. They go on to say, B) Get a multi-regoinal player.

A) They're stupid. LEARN about what you're selling before you sell it.

B) THERE IS NO SUCH THING! While it *is* true that you can 'hack' around such limitations, this is against the rules, and the DMCA in the US (perhaps other laws elsewhere). If people could purchase a multi-region player, the entire regioning system would fall apart.

So i can only conclude one of 2 things. Either some web-monkey at Fox, who knows nothing about DVD's wrote this, or Fox itself didn't know how to answer the question, so told someone to play it stupid, and just give a totally fake answer, like the one presented here.

It appears Fox has no idea of what they're doing technically, or artistically.

Found the same topic at Evergreen Terrace, but with its differences.

http://nohomers.net/cgi-bin/news/fullnews.cgi?newsid1026519493,17769,

"Homer the DVD hacker" was brought up on CNN, which is one of the largest news companies in the US.