finding dance dvds in uk

[aisha_leon]

does anyone know of a retailer that sells instructional dance dvds that will play on uk dvd players?
found quite a few on US websites but unsure that they will play here. Amazon advises not to buy as they are not compatible to uk dvd players. Any advice or recommendations???
many thanks

[michi]

Here in Australia, it is now illegal to region-lock DVD players. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission determined that the practice is anti-competitive (to their great credit).

I would suggest looking at things like Mac the Ripper and FairMount if you are on a Mac, and DVD Decrypter if you are on Windows. These will decode DVDs even on region-locked drives.

Cheers,

Michi.

[bops]

Only the big commercial studios encode their DVDs for a particular region. I wouldn't worry too much about that with dance DVDs. Your problem is more likely to be the format (PAL/NTSC). If you order a DVD made in the US or Japan, it will be in NTSC format, whereas Europe, Asia, and Australia use PAL. So your equipment probably will not be able to play back that type of disc.

As Michi mentioned, if you own a computer with a DVD burner, there's no shortage of software (often free) that will import the video and audio from a DVD to your hard drive. Once you've done that, use the DVD-authoring program included with your computer to burn a new version of the DVD in your local format. On a mac it would be iMovie/iDVD and on a Windows PC it would be Movie Maker/DVD Maker.

[aisha_leon]

Thankyou both for the information, feel abit more confiedent in purchasing afew DVDs now i know i wont have a problem watching them! Thanks again, aisha