Hi Rush,
No apologies necessary, luckily we can't know everything there is to know.
The situation is quite simple actually. In the old VHS days the porblem was the TV-signal types. In the USA they used and still do so the NTSC-format, in almost the rest of the world the standard was and is PAL (although in France they seem to have a different format also). So, if one bought a NTSC-video it could very well be that one could not play it on one's PAL video player. Only later players were introduced that could "eat" NTSC and PAL.
When the DVD was introduced the industry divided the world in several regions (1 is North America, 2 is Europe and Asia, etc.etc.). This was done so that when a movie was released in the USA its introduction could be held back in other regions of the world. So, let's say "The Last Samurai" was released on DVD on 1 June 2004 in North America the DVD would be encoded as region-1 and NTSC and could therefor not be played in the other regions. That is to say, the industry since has introduced DVD-players that are region-free and are suitable for NTSC and PAL. But some brands, such as Sony, still have region coding. Some region-coded players can be made region-free using software, others such as my Sony require a special chip set.
My solution probably will be buy a region free NTSC/PAL player for as low as abt. US$ 50,00 and hook that to my Sony and that way I can play all DVD's
Thanks for the link to Andy, I will contact him

Hi Arie,

This should be good news for you! There's a R2 version of the Chanthology coming out. Check you local e-tailer, but the site I linked to is showing it coming out November 1st for 23 pounds. Interesting enough, that version is 3 discs because they're using double feature discs.

By the way, are you familiar at all with a British company called Orbit Media? They have released Charlie Chan in London on DVD (the first of a proposed series). Unfortunately I've heard some less than flattering things about the general quality of their product from a couple of people.

Thanks!

Steve

That's great news and I guess I can wait until then. I know of the "C.C. in London" release but I already have that one from a different source.