Carol the Dabbler wrote:

Oh, this is funny -- my husband and I were just having the same conversation.  He says last time he checked (fairly recently), he hadn't been able to find any region-free blu-ray players.  If you find one, please let me know!

At this point, I'm not entirely certain what advantage there would be in getting a blu-ray player.  What advantages do you see?  I have a vague impression that there tends to be more extra stuff on the blu-ray discs, but I haven't really checked into that, and certainly not lately.  Do you happen to know?

In general, any DVD or blu-ray player would suffice, because most things are available in both formats, and in both region 1 and region 2 -- eventually.  But I'm imagining this sort of situation:  Season 3 of Sherlock becomes available in region 2 several months before it's available here, AND the blu-ray edition has 'way more features.  If all I have is a region-free DVD player and a region 1 blu-ray player, do I get to enjoy the region 2 DVD right away (and miss a lot of the goodies), or do I have to wait several months for the region 1 blu-ray?  Gaaah!

Gaahhh!  I know!!   The frustrating 'how to access my media in this techy age of media consumption' question again, like we brought up before.  And the various limits that are unfair, then some understandably so (we want our favorite creators to keep enjoying/getting credit/getting compensation by buying it, yes?  just grr at how some networks handle....).  Even Vertue commented on it... something about PBS taking so long due to it's inefficient (read: using snail mail) way of distributing the tapes.  ;P    Rrrrf...  frustrating......  and yeah, this is gonna sound silly...  sighh, you're right about blu-ray, though.  Sure, beautiful hd picture is all the rave these days, and I'm sure it's nice, but I wouldn't buy a new player just for that.  Um...  no... I finally broke down and bought it partly because of the sale, and because I'd gotten increasingly wistful about getting to watch all those extra 'goodies', yes, like you said, which I really enjoy seeing and have slowly migrated to the blu-ray version (even in the also-more-common dvd/blu-ray packs).  But if I'm gonna do that at all, then... yeah... would be even better to have a player like that that's also region-free.  But no.... no luck so far, except some pricey ones that came up when checked Froogle... 

Oh, and by the way, to turn it slightly back to topic... (heh...)  decided to go ahead and watch a few of the videos you mentioned someone posted on you tube of just Martin's parts in Bruiser.  Sometimes hard to catch dialogue, but with sketch stuff in particular, it's often more like 'regular' talking, so easier, plus easy to get the gist of it anyway.    Plus I only just now saw there was a thread about it...  seriously...  oh my god, he's adorably hilarious!  As with many sketch shows, some of them get a little 'old' fast (for me, anyway), but not denying he has such a neat sense of drama and comedy...