According to German news website Heise Online, the German website DVDPlayer.de offers modified versions of the Sony Blu-ray standalones BDP-S300 and BDP-S500 now.
These players are supposed to play both Zone A (America) and B (Europe, Africa) Blu-ray discs as well as region 1 (North America) and region 2 (Europe, Japan) DVDs. The region can be switched by using the remote.
The devices are assumed to behave like "genuine" US and/or European players. Karsten Becker, owner of the business, claims that official firmware updates can be applied to the players without further modification. Contrarily, normal Sony BDPs can apparently be modified as well to support two regions.
The BDP-S300 retails for € 489; the price for BDP-S500 is subject to negotiation.
It is not clear whether these modifications will really be necessary in the long run; codefree Blu-ray discs have already been released by major labels like Warner. A list of codefree and region-locked Blu-ray discs can be found here.
