In the March 8 BLOG entry, Mr. Gibson wondered how to see Lars Von Trier's "The Kingdom" on DVD in region 1 (U.S. and Canada.) Well, I don't think that you can the normal way. Region coding is annoying.

I fixed the problem by buying a very cheap DVD player from a Chinese company called APEX. This DVD player is substandard in every way, except that they opened up the DVD protections. It will play a PAL DVD to an NTSC TV (PAL is the European video standard, NTSC the U.S.), and will play DVDs from other regions. Thus, if I buy "The Kingdom" on DVD from www.amazon.co.uk, I can watch it at home in Ohio.

I don' think that the APEX model that I use is sold anymore, and I wouldn't recommend it if there ios a better alternative. (The remote control is cryptic, and the picture quality is not as good as other DVD players.) There are other Chinese companies following the same strategy. Google for the words DVD region-free PAL, players that will let you watch the movie are about USD $250 or so.

-Jamie