I'm losing patience with the DVD player in my Bose Lifestyle 18 Series 3 system. There doesn't appear to be any way to change the Region code so that I can play DVDs from both Australia and USA.
Then, when I got around to re-adjusting my TV's light/contrast/sharpnes, etc, I realised that it isn't as good as my Philips DVD player.
I could hook the Philips player's sound into the Bose AUX and the picture into my TVs component inputs. However, I'm wondering whether some surgery using a replacement computer DVD drive might be possible. It would certainly reduce my power consumption.
Why not sell the Bose unit and start all over. You should be familiar with Bose' shortcomings by now. With the popularity and resale value of Bose, you should still be able to use the money towards a better system.
It's less than two months old and the sound quality does live up to the hype, so I'm not prepared to go that route. What surprises me is that Bose would use an inferior DVD player as a component. You'd think building their systems in Mexico would provide them with a healthy bottom line.
O--kay. So, can anyone answer the question? Can the DVD component be swapped out for something better or have I got the wrong culprit? Is the problem actually something deeper than just that?
well I think Bose is an excellent investment ...I reckon it might just be a little technical snag you are facing......go check on net ...ull find means to break the code
I bit the bullet and hooked my Philips DVD player into the Bose's Aux sound inputs and dragged a serial cable to the TV. I watched about 10 minutes of a movie using this combo when the sound stopped. Checked wiring, etc, etc. 45 minutes later spotted the troubleshooting advice to switch the system off for a minute then back on to allow the Media Centre to re-establish contact with the Acoustimass speaker. It worked, but good grief! BTW, most useless advice in the troubleshooting guide - check the on/off switch on the Acoustimass. There is no on/off switch!
Actually you can set your Bose Lifestyle 18 system to region-free mode. It uses the same steps as all the Bose Lifestyle systems.
Switching to region-free mode: 1. Put your system into DVD mode 2. Press 'Right' on the remote control once 3. Press 'Up' on the remote control once 4. Press 'Shuffle' on the remote control once 5. Press 'Stop' on the remote control once 6. Press 'Mute' on the remote control once
Some people say that you actually need to use 'Seek Forward' instead of 'Right', and 'Tune Up' instead of 'Up', but I found simple Right and Up to work for me.
You can also set a region, if you want to turn it back to the way it was before.
Reverting to region restricted mode: 1. Eject the DVD -- leave the tray open 2. Press 'Stop' on the remote control once 3. Press 'Shuffle' on the remote control once 4. Press the number of the region (ie 1 for America, 4 for Australia) 5. Press 'Enter' on the remote control once 6. Close the DVD tray
These steps tend not to be documented, I guess because Bose doesn't want to annoy the DVD publishers. But at least in Australia we effectively have a right to disable region encoding... the case Stevens v Kabushiki Kaisha Sony Computer Entertainment showed that technological measures do not override our fundamental rights - such as our right to watch a movie we have legally obtained from anywhere in the world!
I too am looking at replacing the DVD in the Bose 28. It looks to be just a standard Toshiba 16x DVD reader. Model SD-M1502. I am tempted to hook up DVD player from this PC to test it out.