Hi all,

My wife and I are moving to Switzerland in the coming few months and will be bringing some region 1 dvd's and region A blu-ray's with us for the move.

I have therefore been looking at multi-region bluray/dvd players from 220-electronics and they seem to have some good ones for about $350. Digitec, on the other hand, has the same types of players available for about CHF 150-200, but gives no info on whether or not they are multi-regional. I've heard that European players tend to be multi-regional; does anyone here know whether Digitec sells those (or where on their website I can check)?

Thanks for your help!

Welcome to the forum and soon to Switzerland

If they were region-free it would be stipulated. If I were you I'd rather buy one in the US and bring it over.

DON'T bother buying a DVD or Blu-ray player in the USA.

All of the players in CH are either sold "zone free" or you can de-zone them easily.

Most DVDs rented in stores (same idea as Blockbuster) come as region 1 (USA/Canada) and the Blu-ray discs come from Canada as well so also region A.

The price for a good Blu-ray here is less than CHF 200. i.e. link: http://www.toppreise.ch/prod_190768.html

All of the major electronics stores always have them on special.

Good DVD players (zone free) can be had for less than CHF 50.

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Do or do not, there is no try(ing). Yoda

I'd just like to say that I find it very nice that someone's highest information priority in advance of moving to Swiss is "Can I play my blu-rays there?"

I stand corrected then.
When we bought our DVD player, (about 4 years ago) region 1 DVDs were a rare thing and not all players could be hacked easily through a remote hack or a firmware update. The place where we bought ours from refused to make it region free.

In the stores region 1 DVDs were a scarcity compared to region 2.

I guess things have changed.

We have been buying ours from the UK hence the reason why I'm a bit out of touch.

I've been told that the cheapest no-brand DVD players are usually zone free.

It worked for us...we bought an AKIA brand at Media Markt & we happily play all of our US DVDS with it!

You could always see if your current one can be unlocked to be region free

Like others have mentioned, it's usually possible to unlock a dvd player. We used google to find the code for our player, which consisted of a number of buttons to push in a certain order on the remote control.

I have no idea if the same is true for blu-ray, but you can do a bit of searching on google to see what's out there.

Blu-ray is a bit different, and most cannot be unlocked (some can though so still check it out with your current one). While it is true that you can buy cheap code-free dvd players (note: not Blu-ray) over here, we had gone on that advice when we moved, and after buying one, and having it not work for all of our dvds, we ended up shipping one over from a company in the states and thus paid extra in shipping and duty, but we can play all of our dvds! As we had a few hundred, it was kind of key Definitely do your research BEFORE you come over - and if blu-ray is what you need, then get a region free there!

Many thanks to everyone for taking the time to post replies!

It seems to be on the safe side regarding blu-rays it's best to buy a multi-region player here. I'll continue to research and post updates if I find them...

(By the way, I wouldn't say the blu-rays were our top priority. It just seemed like a good idea to post a question here about that!)

When we moved to Asia I went to great lengths to see if my Laura Star steam iron system would work there. We all have our priorities. In hindsight, I should have left it here. Moving electrical items is a hassle and in some cases, the basic removal insurance does not cover these.

As other posters have said:

DVD - either stipulated already that it is region free, or can easily be made region free using codes available on the internet, including everyday brands like Sony.

Blu-Ray - is a hardware issue. So you would need a real hardware upgrade to make it region free. Quite expensive. So buy from the US. As for future purchases, a significant number of discs are not region coded, and you can easily buy from the states via internet.