#23 Region Hacking - How to watch what you want on your DVD player.

When the DVD standard was created, studios and video companies lobbied to carve the globe into six regions, then encode DVDs so that they will only play in their home region. That means that US viewers can't watch Japanese DVDs and vice versa. Thank goodness for hackers. Now people who want to watch Spirited Away or Shaolin Soccer can - with a little extra work. PS2 owners can use DVD Region Free, a disc that flashes away your region settings, which revert once you reboot the machine. Many players (not just the legendary Apex) are remote hackable. Advanced users can update their firmware, by changing the code hard-wired into their DVD player. I'm poised to go all out and snag the Malata N996, which is not only code-free, but converts PAL (the UK TV format) to NTSC (our TV format).

Once you've tamed your player check out CD Japan and Amazon UK (Beware - PAL Region 2 DVDs will view strangely, or not at all, on US TVs without conversion, but seem to replay pretty well on my PC DVD) to hunt down the titles you've been missing.