Written by First things first.
Back in January, we were excited to report that Umbrella Entertainment announced a “Masters Of The Universe” (1987) Collector’s Edition Blu-Ray that included thrilling new features like 2 HOURS of Never-Before-Seen Content and a 48 page book.
Although coming from an Australian company, fans in the United States were also excited with this announcement because the company’s original position was this Blu-ray disc would be playable on Blu-ray players in the United States too. So fans in the U.S. ordered accordingly.
Then, four months later, Umbrella Entertainment sent out a mass e-mail indicating the disc would be (among other things) “Region-B locked”… meaning it will only work on Blu-Ray players in Europe, Africa, Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand. (That report can be found HERE). Fortunately, the Australian company gave fans in the United States a path to cancel their order if they so choose.
Fast forward to a week ago, a member of this great community who lives in the United States reached out to us and indicated they received their Umbrella Entertainment new “Masters Of The Universe” (1987) Collector’s Edition Blu-ray and it played on their U.S. player, a machine that adhered to region locks. They said it worked fine.
Testing it.
Naturally we wanted to give ot a try, and with the new Blu-ray disc in hand we tested on two unaltered United States machines that reportedly adhere to region-locks when it comes to movies: The Sony BDP-S6500 Player and the PlayStation 4 Pro. On both machines it worked. (WARNING: We still do not know / cannot confirm this disc will work on every United States region locked Blu-ray player. It still may not work on your machine. )
So was this just a lucky break, a freak thing, or is the disc actually not excluded from playing in the U.S. region? We just don’t know for certain, but fortunately in our case, we were able to watch the content.. and we wanted to let you know.
And now, a Visual Unboxing:
Now we are looking forward to reading the book and deep diving into all this new content!
We’ll see you next time!
Are you shitting me? Seriously WTF. I pulled my order and got myself a refund because I don’t own an all region player.
I highly-recommend 220 Electronics for aftermarket region-free players. They are located in Elk Grove Village, Illinois and have low prices, quality products, responsive customer service, and fast shipping. I got a top-of-the-line player for about $180. If you are a physical media collector, it is totally worth it. Series like Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light did not get a U.S. release, but did in the U.K., so it helps to not be limited by region-lock.
It turned out I didn’t need a region-free player for this disc so that is what got me so pissed off. I canceled it thinking I did.
That’s messed up.
In the image above it says the book has a chapter called The Missing She-Ra Pages. Are those the same script pages that were posted already or are they different?
https://foreternia.com/2023/09/new-details-are-revealed-regarding-she-ras-cut-role-in-the-1987-masters-of-the-universe-movie
Yeah, I can also confirm it plays on my Sony Ultra HD player with zero issues. I had a sneaking suspicion it might, since Umbrella released Coffy as a special edition. We’d ordered it not fully reading the product description, had it arrive and saw it was listed as Region B and were like “dammit!". I was about to initiate a return, but decided to give it a try and… sure enough… it loaded just fine. I wouldn’t order anything else from them down the road assuming I’ll have the same luck, but in these two cases they worked with our player (which I got off of Amazon a couple of years back, just a regular 4K player- not advertised as being region-less or anything like that). I had put off getting that German Filmation set a while back because it was listed as region-locked, but just my luck I would’ve dropped serious dough on that one only to have it arrive and NOT work on our player.
It went down different than that.
https://foreternia.com/2024/04/delay-changes-in-design-playability-impact-new-masters-of-the-universe-1987-collectors-edition-blu-ray
@kraken Oh, no I meant when I ordered Umbrella’s release of the movie Coffy. THAT one I didn’t realize was Region B until it showed up on my doorstep. I knew about the MOTU changes from their email.