Many, many years ago, 2002 I think?? When I bought my DVD player, I made sure to get an all region one. Which back then, cost me ~$450(That was a MASSIVE amount of money for a 1st year apprentice. 2 weeks wage infact. It took me 2 months to save for it as I was living with, and supporting my GF through Uni at the time). However it enabled me to play anything form anywhere, which saved me a bit of cash over the years, and its still going strong, just a little big. (These days an all region DVD player costs like $20 from Aldi
)
I don't even really use it these days though. The PS3 serves most purposes, which is also region free, and it has the added bonus of a Blu Ray player, and blu rays aren't region coded.