With DVDs, this is still possible, but you have to work a little harder at it. Modified players can be had from Planet3000 and CodeFreeDVD , just to name two. A search engine can easily turn up many other dealers. Planet3000 also sells standards converters and multi-system TVs for dealing with PAL format discs. A map is available here .
Reports indicate that they have had mixed results.
At the time this is typed, the results on smart-adaptive players are mixed. Manual region switched players appear to be unaffected by this new trick. The disc starts to play on any player. The software on the disc loads into the player, where it asks the player for its region code. There is much speculation as the the details, but the upshot is that if the software doesn't like the answer it gets, you get shown a static menu with no selections that explains that there is nothing wrong with the disc, it is meant for region 1 unmodified players only.