Foreign DVDs

Most people don't care about foreign DVDs, but I do. My dream (well, maybe not dream, but it's definitely something I've always really wanted)has always been to watch American movies in German. It's a good way to learn the language and keep up to date, and the movies are ones I am interested in. I'm sure most of you had no idea, but German films tend to be a little weird, just like German literature, and they're really not fun movies to sit down and watch. Ever since 7th grade when I started taking German, and the French students could watch American films in French, I was jealous. I know that European VCRs are different than American ones, so I was really excited when DVDs came around. All DVDs are the same, I thought, so when I go to Germany, I should be able to buy them and they will play in my player. Fortunately, my host family warned me that this might not work, so I didn't buy any while I was there. The world has been divided into regions, with North America and Europe being in separate regions, apparently so that Hollywood can release their DVDs at different times around the world, just as they do with movies in the theater. So, DVDs are encoded to prevent people from buying the DVD in the US and getting it before the rest of their countrymen in "Region x" can. If you buy a DVD player in one country, you can only play DVDs from that country's region on the player. This apparently prevents some sort of copywrite infringement. For more info about this, go to DVD City . Well now they've made "code free" DVD players, which are a great, except that Hollywood got mad and decided that if you buy one of those, you can't play Region 1 (ie American) DVDs on them. So, you have to have 2 DVD players if you want to watch foreign films. I know why they are doing this, but it is still frustrating because I don't want to do anything illegal, I just want to be able to watch these films in German. If they did this whole region thing to prevent people from watching the DVDs too early, they should make it so that you can watch all DVDs on Region 1 players, all but Region 1 on Region 2 players, and so on. I know, this would be a complicated engineering feat, but it sure would be nice. If anyone knows where I can get my hands on "Ice Age" in German that I can play on my Region 1 DVD player, PLEASE tell me! I don't want to spend $300 for an international DVD player, and the movie really is funnier in German, if you can believe it could get any funnier.