There has been some discussion here in the past about DVD players that can play discs from all over the world, not just Region I (North America). A friend of mine recently drew my attention to a website that lists these kind of players:

Overseas Best Buy

She also told me about an even better deal: Costco, the warehouse chain, sells the Daewoo DVDP480 player for an amazing $47, and on the evidence of two other people, it works fine. If you're interested in buying one of these players, it would be worth purchasing a year's membership in Costco just to get one (checking first to see that your local Costco has them in stock or can order them), since the combined cost would still be less than those listed by Overseas Best Buy.

Then you can spend the money you save on DVDs not available in Region I format.

point of some interest related to the topic of multi-sys DVD players: does one still need a PAL-compatible tv monitor to play other region/PAL disks? someone at a local electronics store in nyc said, yes, to this question.
i wonder if he's correct.
if not, this is a really good deal. if so, one needs to explore the tv/monitor situation.
i am NO expert on any of this and am interested from those more informed.

rg, your TV has to be able to be able to receive PAL in order to use these multi-region players, but using a converter on a standard American NTSC TV will accomplish this. Some of the players listed on the Overseas Best Buy site state that they come with built-in converters. The Daewoo player apparently has one, too, because both people I mentioned who have one have ordinary American TVs.

Another inexpensive model that can be, er, adjusted to play dvds from any region is the Cyberhome 320, which is available at Target for $40-something.
The instructions for making the adjustment (aka hack) are at
www.nerd-out.com

I am not particularly technically skilled, but I got this dvd player up and running in multi-region mode in a matter of minutes.