Important dvd question

Hey Everyone,

I have been coming to this website for over a year now reading articles and posts, however, this is the first post I have ever made.

I am moving to the Uk very soon for a couple of years and as I am a huge movie buff, I wish to take my dvd collection with me. I was planning on buying a cheap dvd player when I get there that hopefuly can play my region 1 discs. My questions are, and this goes out to the members and staff of this site:

Does anyone know any good european players that will definately play north american discs, ie. brands and/or model numbers?

Also, I am a little concerned about bringing my large collection with my, and since a friend of mine has a dvd burner, I was thinking of having him back up my movies and then I would take the burned discs with me so if they get damaged or lost, I still at least have my originals. So, how would a burned region 1 disc play on a pal/region 2 player? Does a backup disc read exactly the same way as an original?

Any help provided would be greatly appreciated.

It's not worth burning any of your DVDs. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are right around the corner, so if any of your discs become unplayable, then you can get a next-gen replacement.

Plus HD-DVD will play your old DVD's. I am not sure about blu-ray though.

Dont bet on Blu-Ray or HD-DVD yet...standarts were not selected yet...as for burning your whole selection its time consuming, but by burning you can make the disc regionfree, remove user prohibited actions (those fbi warnings and trailer you can now skip) and still maintain the same Sound and video quality of the orginial, as long as the dvd-burner supports writting on dual-layer Discs (dvd-9 8.5gb) You should buy a player from the UK that is region-free,you can ask specifically in stores or from the net, or burn SOME discs, not all, your 5-10 must-haves!.

I think it makes sense to create backup of some of favourite DVDs, not all though. It will be a while before HD equipment will be available at affordable prices. Plus you will not convert every DVD in your collection to HD. Hence it makes sense to have backups.

While I won't say burning the DVDs is or isn't worth your time, I will ask why you don't just take your Region 1 DVD player with you? You're going to the UK for a couple of years, right? If I was moving there for even 6 months I'd probably take everything with me that I could. You'll only need to reset the power supply setting on the DVD player (that little red switch on the back of every electrical device you've ever bought but never touched) and get a plug adaptor. The output signal from your DVD player should still play on a British TV.