DVD regions and Aldi!

Woo hoo folks - Aldi has finally arrived in Queensland and appears to be the Next Big Thing as far as aussie supermarket shoppers are concerned, bless em. The fact that it's pretty difficult to get a parking space at the new Noosa store should act as a warning shot to the comfortably established chains. However, the Aldi at Logan never seems very busy. Perhaps there are too many poms in the locality who have memories of Aldi back home with their inferior brands and infinite stacks of cardboard boxes.

I too have steered clear of this blue and orange mecca - until yesterday. Fed up with trying to play region 2 and region 4 DVDs on the same PC and only succeeding with about 50% of his collection, Diver Dave threw a strop and announced he was going to buy a new DVD player. Having succumbed to the advertising appeal of the flyer put through our mail box, we flounced off to Noosa's Aldi and bought an all singing all dancing DVD player for $34.99!!! That's about 16 quid. Since it's only supposed to play region 4 DVDs we set about researching the internet for a code to unlock this. Now obviously, since I'm writing this on the world wide interweb, I absolutely do not condone this type of practice. But hey - screw the big DVD distribution monopolies! It took less than a minute to find.

For 35 bucks we now have a DVD player that seems to play DVDs from around the world. And since it's still cheaper to buy most current DVDs from Amazon UK and have them sent over than it is to buy anywhere in oz, that's what we'll carry on doing. So there.

Predictably, the new wonder face cream for 1.89GBP (got no pound signs on this puter!) from Aldi that everyone's been raving about in the UK isn't available Down Under. So you can all stop raving about it until it is - or send me some!