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Wednesday, May 31, 2017

'Inside the Freemasons' TV Series DVD Now Available Worldwide


Inside the Freemasons, the five-part video series produced by Britain's Sky TV network in full cooperation with the United Grand Lodge of England, aired starting in April as part of the run-up to the 300th anniversary of the London founding of the Premiere Grand Lodge. From all accounts, the program was well received throughout the country. What I was able to see was respectful, factual, and blessedly free of the typical madness and 'woo-woo factor' that usually characterizes TV shows about the fraternity. But while the episodes have been viewable online for those living inside of Sky's official broadcast region, the rest of the world has been shut out of legally being able to see it.


Now, UGLE's official shop, Letchworth's in Great Queen Street's Freemasons' Hall, is now offering the entire series as a DVD set for preorder sales online HERE. While a few of us die-hard British TV fans have actually blown for our own region-free DVD players so we can order obscure Carry On movies, Up Pompeii episodes and such from Amazon.co.uk, not everyone else is quite so deranged as Hodapphäus. 

The price is £12.49 (currently about US$16), plus shipping. Expected release date is June 15th, and the Royal Mail to the U.S. is generally pretty efficient.

Be good boys and girls and don't go hunting and circulating bit torrent files or cruising for pirated copies from Russian file sharing sites, most especially since it's for sale legally now.

UPDATE 6/21/2017: 
According to the description, this was supposed to play "in all formats," implying the discs were to be viewable no matter what part of the world you happen to be in or where your player is officially set up for. THAT IS DECEIVING! The disc set that arrived this week is NOT REGION FREE. IT IS A REGION 2 DISC ONLY, which means primarily Europe, Japan, and the Middle East! You MUST play this in either a region-free DVD player, or on a computer that permits you to switch regions. Most computer DVD drives allow you to do this, but ONLY a limited number of times. My iMac only lets me switch back and forth 4 times before it locks forever on the last one it is set it for. So, be aware of this limitation. It probably will NOT play at all in your older home DVD player hooked to your TV in the U.S. (The U.S. and Canada are Region 1, in case you wondered).

A TRUE Region-free DVD should be labeled for region 0.

If none of this means anything to you, check out the Wikipedia article on DVD Region Codes HERE.

4 comments:

  1. OMG you like the 'Carry On' movies? You're my hero!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, we pretty much have them all.

      Alice has a major Sid James thing going on. And I did a decent Bernard Bresslaw when I used to drink...

      Delete
    2. We've had a Pioneer region-free unit for about 8 years, the only way I could watch complete 'Doctor In The House' and 'Dave Allen' episodes.

      Delete
  2. Finally a true account of Masons. Without all the crazy gossip... Well done Chris !

    ReplyDelete

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