Do German DVDs play in USA DVD players?

[reader850]

Can a DVD movie bought in Germany be played on my standard DVD player in the USA? We speak a little German and would like to improve by watching German language movies, but find very few here in the US. My son will be in Germany next month, so if there is a cheap way to do it, he will bring some DVDs back with him. Thanks for any info you guys can offer.
--Allan

 

[ponyo]

Some DVD players can be hacked to do play all region via hacked firmware upgrade or key presses. Or you can rip it using your computer DVD burner and burn without any region coding. You should be able to change the region setting on your computer DVD player/burner couple of times legally or unlimited times using hacks.

 

[cubby1223]

Safest bet is to play them through a computer, almost all dvd-rom drives have firmware updates to make them region free, search google, they're out there. And the popular dvd playback software also has hacks to make them region free as well.

Worse comes to worse, when you make dvd "backups", the region encoding can be stripped out.

 

[reader850]

Thanks, guys, this is encouraging. We'll do it.
--Allan

 

[Safeway]

no

 

[DVad3r]

No they won't play in US DVD players, unless the disc is region free. You can backup the DVD though with a program like DVD Shrink and make it region free though.

 

[DVad3r]

Also, some North American DVD players play everything under gods green earth. I have a cheap nova player from zellars that cost me 50 bucks and it plays everything.

 

[ponyo]

This can play any region and even play divx, avi, mpeg, etc

 

[OffTopic1]

Computer play all region, and some DVD player are region free. You son can also purchase a cheap DVD player while he is over there.