I am in the middle east and I buy my blurays from the US. Middle East is Region 2/B while US is 1/A. I had that kind of problem before. But since I mostly watch movies from my PC (because of JRiver Media Center), I decided to get the Panasonic BDR-2209 not only for its ability to play blu-ray discs but also because it can burn them. While it can read Region A/1 discs, it can't read any other regions.
What I did was I purchased a license from Slysoft AnyDVD HD ( which has since been bought by RedFox), which unlocks the region to allow playback. I then used a variety of tools namely BD Info, tsMuxer, and MKVToolNix to rip the titles in Remux.
These days I don't buy blurays anymore, I just download them. I'm now even in the process of downloading the Passengers native 4k title for 54 GB.
Hope this helps.