Hi everybody! this is my first post here and i was hoping someone will be able to help me out! I know from reading DVD magazines that certain players can be"soft chipped", disabling the region coding witout the need for internal "surgery" being carried out on the machine.I'm hoping that someone will be able to tell me if i can do this with my player ( Panasonic-DVD-A160EB), and assuming that i can does anybody know the code and method for inputting it on this machine? Any help would be greatly apreciated as i'm desperate to start buying American DVDs but don't fancy forking out for another player considering i've had this one less than a year!
ONYX.

As far as I can find out there is no code for your player. It is possible to have the player chipped to do the job. IF you would like I can post the address of a company that fixed a philips machine for me.

Adam.

thanks, i apreciate the info, although i live in N.ireland and i would be looking for someone who can chip it locally.Also i have read in various sites while searching for this code that a new kind of disc is being produced that can detect if its being played on a muliti-region or chipped player and refuses to allow access.This being the case is there any point in getting my player chipped now at all?

It depends on what films you want. Region 1 will always have a large back catalogue that we don't. It will be a shame if new R1 discs will no longer work on chipped machines, but ultimately it all depends on whether this new type of r1 disc is real or just a myth.

From what I understand players that are capable of playing region 1 discs will either modified in two different ways. Either they are modified so they play any disc from any region (effectively region free so they do not look at what region the disc is from) OR they are modified so that they 'change' the regional coding of the player as appropriate. If your player changes to a region 1 player by a code (whether it has been hard or soft-chipped) then I would think the new disks will still play as they will be checking that the player is region 1 before playing (thus they will not work on a region free player. Hope this makes sense!

Try Link Electronics (www.linkonline.co.uk)

The Panasonics don't have hanset hacks so you will need a chip. Link will sell you the chip which is easy to fit.

If you need any more advice please get in touch