Fan of British TV series? Order from the UK and save money

[Lydia Leftcoast]

It's counter-intuitive, since everything else is more expensive in Britain than here, but DVDs are an exception.

If you're a fan of MI-5/Spooks, you'll know that the list price for Series 6 (soon to be released here) is around $80, $60 at websites like DeepDiscountDVD.

Well, folks, I just ordered Series 6 of Spooks for the equivalent of about $30 from Amazon UK.

If I wanted to get the entire run of Inspector Morse (which I don't, but just supposing), I could get it for around $60 through Amazon UK, a real bargain considering that Borders charges $80 for a package of just a few episodes.

In general, anything that's not absolutely new is available at a low price. Bargain sites in the U.S. occasionally have real bargains (the entire Prisoner series for $30 recently), but on the whole, you're better off buying British series from British websites.

An additional benefit is that many fine British series and European movies have never been released in Region 1 format. There they are for your viewing pleasure.

The one catch is that you have to have a region-free DVD player to play disks coded for Europe (Region 2), as most Amazon UK disks are, but you can buy those over the Internet, and they cost only about $20 more than a comparable regular U.S. (Region 1) DVD player.

If you don't want to spend that, you can use an Apple computer's disk drive, and if you don't use it for anything but European disks, the computer will automatically set itself for Region 2. (You can switch regions 5 times before the computer "locks" on one region.)

Windows owners can tell you whether the same is true for Windows computers.

I hardly ever turn the TV on for broadcast programming anymore.

[LeftyMom]

1. I've never had a problem playing non-Region 1 material on my PC

Sony Vaio running Vista fwiw.

If you want to make a backup copy of your purchase, I know that Nero can remove regional coding and convert PAL to NTSC, etc for playing weird furriner formats on Region 1 equipment.

There are also instructions online for removing regional coding on a lot of DVD players, so a person might not need to invest in new equipment to play movies purchased overseas.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Excellent news for those who don't want to get a new DVD player

(I needed a new one anyway, since my first el cheapo model had stopped playing ANY kind of disk.)

[xxqqqzme]

2. My favorite is

Foyle's War. All my favorites seem to have disappeared in favor of fill time fund raising in PBS.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Well, I believe Foyle's War has been canceled,

but the DVDs are about $25 per season from Amazon UK.

What happened with the mysteries was that Mobil Oil stopped sponsoring Mystery and Masterpiece Theater. Since these were two of their most popular programs, PBS decided to save money by merging them. They do a few months of Mystery, a few months of Masterpiece.

[xxqqqzme]

9. Foyle wasn't

canceled, it wrapped up its story lines a couple of years ago. All of the Mystery series, at least out here in SoCal, were all repeats during the last season - Inspector Lynley, Jericho, Miss Marple. BBC isn't showing any mysteries either (where I first saw Touching Evil and Hetty Wainthropp as well as Rosemary & Thyme - have they abandoned the genre?

[Crunchy Frog]

5. I got the Monty Python TV series from Germany.

It was much less expensive than the US one, and it had alot of stuff that was cut from the US version. The US version was actually insanely expensive, especially considering what you actually get for the money.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. I may be ordering from the French and German versions of Amazon, now

that some DUers have told me about great series that have never been shown in the U.S. and most likely never will be. It would be a great way to brush up on the languages I studied in college 35 years ago.

[Crunchy Frog]

7. I've got access to a bittorrent site

that has just about everything that ever played on British TV, if you're interested.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. I've never been able to get it to work right

and there's nothing I absolutely have to see at this moment. But thanks anyway!

[Forkboy]

10. Many DVD players can be very easily hacked to remove region coding.

I did it to mine simply by downloading a program for my model DVD player, burning it to a disc and putting it in the DVD player. It flashed the bios and a moment later it was done. Viola, region free (as well as the Macrovison being disabled, allowing me to put some old videos on DVD).

I order mine through Amazon UK (Fry and Laurie, Alexei Sayle, French and Saunders, etc) and save the money, plus they all play now on my supposedly Region 1 only DVD player. :)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. And with the pound really low in relation to the dollar now

It's a better deal than ever. :-)