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DVD Zoning Challenged by UK Supermarket Chain
maroberts writes, "Britain's larget supermarket chain, Tesco, called on Warner Home Video to abandon zoning which inflates UK DVD prices, reports
The Independent. Apparently sales of Tesco's stock DVD player [Wharefdale DVD-750] skyrocketed after the UK's hi-fi press explained how to make the unit region-free. " Looks like the UK is tired of overpaying for movies.
I just though of an idea. Let's all go out and buy dvd players which region set depending on the disk. Flip it back and fourth a bunch of times and then when it is stuck in a non local region return it and exchange it for another dvd player. Just tell the store that the "picture sucks" and you want to upgrade to that other player.
Now stores will be stuck with a bunch of stuck region players which they will unwittingly pass off to the next consumer. With enough pissed off consumers.... bleeding the manufactures with enough red ink. You can believe that they will drop region coding like a hot potato.
Darn! My disguise has been penetrated!
The first generation Sony high-end DVD player had a dip-switches on the inside that allowed both MacroVision and Region coding to be disabled.
These were pretty popular units among 'early adopters' -- you probably can pick one up used fairly easily.
There's another version where the evil IBM Troopers try to enslave the peace-loving VAX gurus.
One could imagine a version where the evil Sun Troopers try to enslave the peace-loving Novell gurus, etc etc.
It is already possible to defeat region coding on a lot of drives with a Windows program, yet the MPAA doesn't go after them.
This is the reason: individual people can get that Windows program and ignore region coding. But this doesn't enable *drive manufacturers* to do it. Because drive manufacturers have to abide by the license for CSS, and the license would include clauses that prohibit the manufacture of players that don't obey region coding (or that don't obey nonskippable advertisements, etc.)
This means that DeCSS raises the potential for *commercial* players that don't incorporate consumer-unfriendly features like region coding. Because a manufacturer doesn't have to license CSS at all, instead using the information in DeCSS to make his player. And *that's* what the MPAA doesn't like. Not the idea that a few hackers can download from the Internet, but the idea that anyone can walk into a store and find a DVD drive that loudly claims that it lets you pause Disney movies while the other drives don't.
You are like, soooo redundant.
We in the free world used to looked down on this practise, severely, as a fundamental violation of basic rights. Now ve have DVD politburo tellink us vhut can be vatched vith region lockouts. Punishment for circumventing ziss scheme vill get you sent to salt mine in Siberia. Well fuck this. I say, region lockouts are a means of SUPPRESSING POLIICAL SPEECH across areas of the world. This is NOT market based. It's POLITICAL. And therefore UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Notice how China is its own region (region=6)? Hmmm? China wanted 'dangerous foreign ideas' suppressed from the bulk of its people excepting HK and Taiwan (which are quasi separate anyway).
Tried, maybe. But in a case like the example given, any jury in existance would return not guilty. Defense, although we don't like to think so, even in our modern civilized society does sometimes come down to me vs. him with no one else able to stop him. And boy, passive action ain't gonna get you anywhere. I, for one, don't propose to sit there and get shot while waiting for the law.
It has a firmware update, and also a patch to Apple's "DVD Region Manager" which bypasses the count change decrement code. The current drive in the G4 is "MATSHITA" (Panasonic/Matsushita) 8584-A (the same .hqx file contains the firware and patch)
I don't know if the Region Manager patch can be used with any Mac DVD drive or not, but I don't see why not.
There are other patches for drives in the wintel world as well.
Another reason (if the first is legitimate), is to prevent sellers from taking movies from one area and selling them at a lower price in another. In other words, they want to charge different prices to different geographical areas, and zoning is the way they do this.
Is it really an "effective means of access control" if a button on the remote turns it off?
I don't think so.
Re: Guns. I like my guns, thank you very much. I have been robbed, assaulted,and beaten in the past. Next time, *I* won't be the one lying on the ground, bleeding, while the police take 10-30 minutes to arrive.
I bought one from http://www.onsale.com auction for $150. That was about two months ago.
You've been talking out of it too much.
http://goatse.cx/
Hooray! According to http://us.imdb.com/Sections/DVDs/Regions/1/ a lot of fine movies will soon hit the European theaters, e.g.: Scarlet Pimpernel, The (1934); Scarface (1983); Sea of Love (1989); Scent of a Woman (1992); Sense and Sensibility (1995) and many, many more...
the DVD association doesn't have the right to tell a supermarket what it is and is not allowed to sell.
Sure they do, it's just that the supermarket chain have the right to laugh in their faces.
Correct. DeBeers is a diamond cartel, Opec is an oil cartel, I expect we can come up with some other examples of cartels too... I'm just lost as to what our point was supposed to be.
DeBeers is a diamond cartel. Diamonds would be near worthless (well, not worthless, but 1/100 of their price) if it wasn't for them. It went through them, or the store is out of business (usually).
I only know what the market price for DVDs is in Region 1 (California, to be more specific), but after years of spending $50+ for laser discs, I don't have any problem spending $15-$25 for a DVD. Also, even considering the drop in price of DVD players, the DVD market is still not as large as that of VHS (NTSC or PAL). So, if you don't want to spend the dough on a DVD, just get the crap-o-vision, uh I mean VHS, version.
One more thing: The entire reason for the region coding is to help prevent groups in certain regions from pirating the disks and selling them in another region. Arguments for/against DVD cracking aside, let's just remember we're talking about entertainment content that some people think isn't "cheap enough" and not the forces of Big Brother thwarting free speech between dissident groups.
This is like a "[nation]'s largest taxi cab chain" protesting how OPEC is raising oil prices. The controlling body sitting in a foreign land couldn't give a flying fsck what a peon waaay down the supply chain thinks.
released by DML is also not region coded. BUT: I warn you, this is the worst DVD ever mastered in the history of mankind. There is GHOSTING, yes, GHOSTING in the image. This is a ALL digital format, how the heck did they get that in there. Not only that, but in the last minute the sound is 1 or 2 seconds out of sync with the picture.
Oh well, I will be returning the DVD sometime soon. That is just pathetic!
I would love to see somebody put a bullet in Jack Valenti's head. Get on with it!
ok... I've seen it stated in several otherwise legitimate/informed places that region coding is illegal in New Zealand, but none of these site specifically cite the source of their claims...
:(
Thus i ask - what piece of statute, regulation or other delegated legislation makes region coding illegal in new zealand.. or if the illegality is not directly/expressly found in statute, what is the basis for this claim ?
Even if region coding is illegal in new zealand, it's next to impossible to find any dvd's other than a very poxy selection of r4 titles, or the occasional, retial priced r1 title
They deserve pirate copies being made by the billions, if a company sells DVDs nearly 2x price of VideoTapes , they are complete fuckers.
1. VideoTapes cost more to manufacture/ship/test
2. DVDs can be pressed by the 10,000's / day for $0.50 each
Conclusion: DVDS MUST be $5-8 retail, forget rental schemes, just sell em for $8
to apply to copyright violations. But what do you expect from a third-generation asshole thieving lawyer? He's a software extortionist.
It's not the manufacturers, its the MPAA and their ilk.
If China can have its own region, why can't I?
Can I have my own Slashdot region code?
I want the following 'dangerous foreign ideas' suppressed for my region on all media:
Jon Katz
The MPAA
GNU
Kevin Mitnick
HUALHUAHULAHUALHUAGH COCKS!!!!!!!!!
Thank you.
dude, you gotta start taking the medication they gave you or they'll put you back inside, you know it.
Quasi? Taiwan is separate, in every way that matters. Only the Chinese government, the politicians they bought (such as Clinton), and diplomats playing their little games think otherwise.
Circumvention isn't illegal in the UK - no DMCA.
that reply and your sig are a good argument for using that neat "post anonymously" button.
That's true. It's just one more damn thing after another.
(been waiting YEARS to use that joke)
People get them because there's a better selection of region-1's (the range of 2's is growing all the time but it still doesn't go that far beyond the mainstream), they're cheaper (going rate for a region-2 DVD in the UK is 18 pounds) and UK releases of movies tend to have heavier censored then US releases, usually cuts for violence. I know 4 people with DVD-players from different makers, they've all been hacked. I believe the manufactures know that a player with secure region coding simply won't sell in the UK.
The popularity, IMHO, isn't due as much to the ability to play imports as it is to the fact that those same chips usually allow people to rather trivially play copied games. This is aside from the fact that the market situation for the past 3 years or so has effectively been PSX Vs. N64, and N64 doesn't have nearly as many "big" (read: stuff like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy 7/8) games to draw people to it. Add this to the fact that older re-released PSX games can often be had for $20, whereas the cheapest N64 games generally hover around $40-$50, and it's not difficult to see where Playstation's popularity comes from.
I looked at DVD's the last time I was in the UK (August 99) and the prices looked to be about 12 - 16 pounds each, or roughly $19 - $25. But this is also before the VAT of about 20%, so you're really talking $23 - $30 as a comparative price to ordering them off the Web in the US.
:Insurrection (Wide Screen) £ 16.99
Here is the prices for the top-selling DVD's on Tesco's own website:
1. Mummy, The £ 11.99
2. X Files, The - Biogenesis £ 10.99
3. Matrix £ 11.99
4. Notting Hill £ 11.99
5. You've Got Mail £ 11.99
6. Gormenghast £ 17.99
7. Saving Private Ryan £ 9.99
8. Star Trek
9. Lethal Weapon 4 £ 11.99
10. Armageddon £ 12.99
I wonder how is the above mentioned supermarket chain able to sell DVD players that play movies from any zone ? When the DVD player leaves the store, it has Region coding in place. There was an article describing how to de-region it in a Hi-Fi/Home Theatre magazine.
Re: Guns. I like my guns, thank you very much.
So that's why more Americans die to guns than car accidents. Personally, I'd be shit scared to live in a society where a heated argument that gets out of hand is likely to end with a gunshot rather than a punch in the face.
Guns don't kill people. Bullets kill people. Ban bullets!
All we need now is some dodgy company to build a DVD player with DeCSS on it that will play all zones. You can be it will sell _really_ well, then the other manufacturers will have to do the same.
Maybe that is what the MPAA is really afraid of.
that they are going to start importing cars from Europe
;-)
Uh, and how the hell are they going to move the steering wheel?
And plus then you will have "erp"
But I still don't know what XML means, oh bother. I'll bet Microsoft knows, they can help me, Bill Gates programmed the Internet he did. But I don't trust Ballmer, or should I say, Balder.
> I wonder how is the above mentioned supermarket chain able to sell DVD players that play movies
> from any zone ? Have they obtained a license from the DVD association for all the zones ?
the DVD association doesn't have the right to tell a supermarket what it is and is not allowed to sell.
> Now, more and more decoder cards have a little EPROM (or somesuch) that counts the number of
:)
> region changes, and if it's changed around too much, it will stop allowing you to change the
> region code and you'll be stuck.
Now all we need is a new e-mail virus program that changes the region permanently on all these drives to something useless
Anyone up for creating some massive bad publicity for the DVD people?
Some dvd players will let you get around the adds. If your player has a "play-back-control" or PBC option and you switch it off, this will interupt the title chapter (the one with the FBI warning)and usually switching it back on will let you restart the disk past the commercials. This track was initially intended to convey a friendly fbi warning but some marketing droids decided that it would be a good way to waste 10min+ of our time. I say boycott these disks on principle or send the makers a bill for your time.
. . . my socks are region free, yet no one has tried to inflate the prices on my sock drawer. And my socks are fully open sourced; you could modify, recompile and sell my socks without violating any license agreements. My socks work equally well on Win32 and *nix platforms due to FootMorphing(tm) technology, which is also free to implement on any other household goods. Right now I'm working on using FootMorphing(tm) on my toaster such that I could toast bread and cheese, eliminating the need for a skillet in preparing grilled cheese sandwiches.
Down with the UK. Support my socks. Thank you the end.
Does anyone know what the average price difference is between a DVD in the U.S. and in the U.K.? I was just thinking that a DVD imported from the U.S. would probably be around the same price factoring in the shipping.
the boycot of china isn't political. They don't want the chinese to start copying DVD's left and right and then selling them in other countries. (but the chinese people would never do this)...
this isn't entirely correct. how many people do you know that have 'cracked' cabletv boxes? I bet a good portion of them bought them that way. Same with DVD players, the same sources I know selling cable tv boxes also have de-regioned DVD players.
Btw, I know two little old grannies with cracked cable boxes, they know nothing of how to do it but they knew where to buy them.
The UK has only a few large `grocery store' chains which have themselves been the subject of investigation by the government for having too much control over the market and driving up their own profits at the expense of others.
In particular they have a reputation for being quite hard on their suppliers whether they are farmers, electronics companies, fashion designers, Hollywood or whoever. They use their lock on the retail chain in the UK to force the suppliers to agree to their terms.
In addition to food these `grocery stores' sell petrol (gasoline), clothes, music and video, banking services, and consumer electronics among other things. They are more like major general purpose retailers such as Walmart is in the US.
Oh wait, they are the evil pro-region-codes media. They'll never air this story.
> Now maybe Circuit City will start carrying the
> Apex DVD player again that has the region code
> breaking built in:) and an mp3 player
"Play up to 12 hours of MP3 recorded music on Apex's new DVD player."
It's back. Just saw the advertisment in todays SF Chronicle, the Apex AD600A for $179.99 at Circuit City.
e
In addition to the Apex, many other players have similar capabilities including some from shinco, Raite and Yamakawa.
Well, well, well. It looks like not all the Tesco management are to be found in the vegetable section.
Anyone know the legal position of DeCSS in the UK btw?
Wingnut
According to babelfish, you're right.
Seem to me the best way to prevent "undermining of theatre ticket sales" would be to release the movie simultaneously in all regions...
It's never been illegal to import a VHS tape from another country, so it shouldn't be illegal to circumvent these region codes either.
Just watching the primaries makes me laugh, no democracy there, only two parties both the same... No policy, just placating the militants...
Have a look at the low countries 15+ parties, everything above board (i.e. open negotiations, public compromises). Everyone their own political party, that is democracy!
> The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
Geeze, that brings to mind "System Wars" where the evil Vax Troopers tried to enslave the peace-loving Unix gurus. (Or whatever, that was a long,long time ago...)
Which makes we wonder -- Is there an equivalent parody of "Star Wars" about the evil corporations trying to snuff the resurgent "GEEK THREAT"(tm)?
"Help me Obi-Woz Kenobi, you're our only hope..."
rantman, feeling old
No, just the Chinese govt.
This is an important point : companies do not have souls, they do not know right from wrong. Companies are driven by the desire to make a profit and somewhat by the fear of legal sanction (fines).
Conversely, companies have no rights. You can't deprive a company of its life, liberty or pursuit of happiness.
BUT -- the individuals making up companies do have souls, should know right from wrong, and do have rights.
I think that the DVD-CCA could be considered to be a cartel under EU rules... There are big penalties for that (something like what M$ could face if they are found guilty for W-Ohh-Ohh).
I wonder how is the above mentioned supermarket chain able to sell DVD players that play movies from any zone ? Have they obtained a license from the DVD association for all the zones ?
> Way to go, Tesco!
Oh come on. It's just two big fishes fighting over the small fish.
I'm a slashdot certified trollware engineer.
(SCTE)
I think it's spelled "Wharfedale."
Well, at least you guys are free to own guns.
Those are for if the DMCA doesn't get overturned in court.
The problems is that Laws don't even make sense. In America you can copy stuff for personall uses but you can't make software to copy stuff??? I have said before that Americans are on CRACK.
The other thing I have noticed si that laws are not even consistent in one country to the next? The Germans are allowed to copy movies for personal uses if they rent a movie. I have said beofre that Germans smoke to much weed. They even have to pay TAXes so they can copy movies that they rent??? What is this some kind of pirate movie tax? It's a good thing the DVD consitorium is trying to sort these Germans out. I'm surprised that America even lets them run their country the silly things they do.
In Holland the do all kinds of drugs but I haven't heard about their stances on DVD.
The point is.... These DVD guys are doing su a favor. People who make Laws are on crack. DVD should decide how to make the copying and selling rules.
They shold also be allowed to charge extra if they can get away with it because they have a monopoly. And the money is going to starving artists like James Bond. Don't you guys like James Bond. He was crying last time when I talked o him on the phone. "These Linux programmers want to watch movies and won't buy windows" That is what he siad. And I started to cry as well.
Have a heart. Buy windows2000. It is most stable than Solaris anyways. And plus then you will have "erp"
And it's about time.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Check out the Apex DVD player. Its the same one which plays MP3s. The engineers left a hidden menu on the player. It has the ability to select any region and to turn off macrovision (so it can be recorded to VHS). The player is not the highest quality (I had to open mine up and replug some cables to get the remote to work). Its based around an IDE DVD-ROM drive which means it can also play from CD-R and CD-RW media. All in all this is a very sweet unit for Nerd-Out
And it's my understanding that collaborative price fixing organizations like OPEC are illegal in the US, the UK, etc. Why should the MPAA/DVD consortium not be ruled an "illegal collaborative price fixing organization" with regard to region coding. Then we could just dump regions and start producing all players as region free players. Region coding would go the way of the 'bozo bit'. (You Macintosh people know what I mean hby this).
[Original story]: Looks like the UK is tired of overpaying for movies.
Hmm... In fact, the UK is tired of overpaying for everything - current buzzword in the media is "Rip-off Britian", referring to overpricing of just about anything the press can find that costs more than Europe, US, or anywhere else.
Personally, I think the media is overplaying it, but it probably needs to be overplayed, because it does happen in certain markets, and it really is pretty bad.
The markets where it happens are mostly those where relatively few companies control the market, such as automobiles and groceries. I guess DVDs fall neatly into that category as well.
In the case of vehicles, people are finding that it's cheaper to go to europe, buy a British-made car over there, and have it shipped back here, than it is to buy the same car from a showroom just down the road from the factory.
So with cars at least, people have found a way around it, and the industry is being forced (reluctantly) to react.
In the case of DVDs, the zoning is there for the singular reason to prevent that kind of consumer action. This is surely wrong. In a true free-market economy, product prices are driven down by consumers; With zoning, this can't easily happen. Therefore zoning is an attempt by a small group of companies to maintain artificial price levels; surely this qualifies as a cartel?
--
Spudley strikes again!
> It *is* about piracy...
If you define piracy to mean going out, buying a legal copy of a movie, and playing it.
Piracy is where you attack defenseless people, rape them and take all their valuables at gunpoint. Buying a video from a foreign source and viewing it before the studios hardly sounds like piracy, more like working around the idiocy of the studios distribution system. Why should somebody in the UK have to wait 6 months after a movie is released in the US to view it? It's not like they're going to fly to New York, go to a movie theater, then fly home. And it's not like they have to dub the movie in Commonwealth English instead of American "English". By the way, I'm from the US, and I still don't understand the reasons for the foreign distribution delays.
It's all about image, at least here in the US. Every stupid piece of (major) legislation is given a nickname like the "Victim Rights" bill or whatever. Who's going to be against the rights of victims? Likewise, who's going to be for piracy? When someone types /nick President_Clinton in IRC, they aren't a simple prankter, but an eveil hacker out to wreak havoc on all of cnn.com. Republications put out a national budget, Democrats rave that it will descroy the entire universe (1995 and the "school lunch" fiasco), they add two dollars here, subtract two dollars there, and voila they have a similar budget that adverts major catastrophe. Every computer/Internet related news piece uses "hacker" and "your credit card number" in the same sentence.
Every little thing is given such a label so that the general (uneducated) public will be instantly on their side when they see the piece on the local news. In that one little phrase, the majority of the public is agreeing with them. What can we do? Well, just keep preaching the good word. You'll be labelled many things yourselves, but with perseverence we shall prevail...
Why would it be illegal for you to play this hypothetical (or not) DVD? At any rate, region codes have absolutely no effect on piracy -- if a pirate wants to sell bootlegs of an already-existing disc, they can set the region code on the copies to whatever they damn well please. Of course, that's not where the money is. The market wants bootlegs of movies for which no legal disc exists, and this is exactly what pirates provide.
I'm really glad to see a corporate entity with somewhat of a soul.
Actually, I suspect Tesco's concern is with the region-encoding disabled, people will buy DVDs cheaper from overseas sources and not from Tesco's. Tescos can't price-match because they pay a higher base price for their region 2 discs. Still, the enemy of my enemy...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
One thing that has me hesitating on buying a DVD player is those horrible "can't fast-forward through" bits on some discs, usually the FBI warning, but apparently the most egregious being Disney's "Tarzan" which forces you to watch the ads each time. Does this player also get around that abomination?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I don't think the studios really believe it stops piracy, but they can't very well say that it allows them to gouge consumers in other countries, now, can they?
Make me aerodynamic in the evening air
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Well... my apex dvd just arrived today. can't wait to set it up tonight.
anywho, check circuit city's website and you may be able to order one even if you can't in the retail stores.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
>> Except that some (most?) region 2/3/4/5/6
>> transfers are done quick-and-dirty
I've got news for you, region 1 discs are done quick and dirty (and released cheap), region 2 discs are done to much higher standards, better MPEG encoding and with more extras - partly to justify the higher cost.
Compare US and UK releases of the same material, check the image quality and MPEG artifacts...
Tim
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
Not in Oregon he wouldn't. Not in a lot of States. The right to keep and bear arms is specifically a self-defense right in the Constitutions of much of the American West.
We had a guy in Oregon recently who was fleeing the police, going from house to house looking for hostages, who was forced to drop his weapon by a housewife with a pistol, and on going to the next house, was shot with a .22 rifle by a 12-year-old boy babysitting his younger brother.
Fighting back works. Use a knife if you don't have a gun, use your hands if you have to... but with a gun, it doesn't matter if your attacker is bigger, faster, or has less to lose.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Can anyone give a rational reason why DVD should be any different to these other media?
Three words: Because They Can. Just like making you watch the FBI warning (OK its a bit annoying), but to make you watch the previews??? I would consider that a defective disk and return it. Oops, off on a rant again.
I think we are just seeing the downside of the new technology. VCRs started out with very little in the way of digital circuitry. Remember the VCRs (or even TVs for that matter) that had tuner knobs? Technology improved and now VCRs and TVs have no moving parts for channel selection apart from up/down buttons. As processing power gets cheaper it allows more things like DIVX, CSS, whatever. VCRs had measures to make copying difficult, but with better technology, these measures have become more sophisticated.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Its about time! The zoning they put into DVD players is just another over reach of their power. It allows them to create the prices for dvd players and the media....
Just because they came up with this simple system doesnt mean that they should make billions off of consumers...
Geez, read what you moderate next time --- mark it as funny, but this is NOT for real, you are going to mislead people.
Kellner continued, popping open a bottle of Champaign and proceeding to roll around in a pile of thousand dollar bills
Kellner said, as a servant spoon-fed him Caviar from a crystal platter in the backseat of his stretch limousine
--
Infuriate left and right
Time for government investigation/lawsuit against the DVD player manufactureres for illegal restraint of trade. Certainly the consumer reaction in this case clearly demonstrates the effect that the regional codes had on the marketplace.
Are you sure? Won't those Region 1 players generally only barf up a crappy NTSC signal which is of no use to a TV that can only take PAL/SECAM/...
Not to mention the 120V/60Hz to 230V/50Hz conversion. The voltage transformation is easy, but this is the kind of device that typically will not like a different AC frequency. I'm sure they don't sell those things with autosensing power supplies...
And if so, can anyone recommend me a player that will do multiple DVD regions, play MP3s from a CD, with an autosensing power supply, an RGB (SCART and that Sony tulip-plug thing) connector and switchable NTSC/PAL/SECAM output?
I'm from mainland Europe, I'm based in the UK, and I currently live in the US. I haven't been able to buy any video hardware or media for years because of all these stupid incompatibilities.
(Unless if you're only talking about computer DVD drives).
While I'm doing an inane post, I'd just like to plug my Australian site with the Livid and DeCSS stuff. (It's down the bottom in the software section.)
Bite the hand.
Well they better start suing a lot of people then because everywhere ( well almost, every selfrespecting DVD dealer sells them that way) here in Sweden you get your DVD region free... Well wait, don't tell I dold you.
They ARE suing a lot of people after all...
It's called new wave but it's just the same.
So I can't spell today. I really should use preview.
It's called new wave but it's just the same.
The device sold under the brand name "Yamakawa" in Germany and presumably elsewhere, is identical to the "Raite", only with a different label. Hope it helps.
I was chatting with a guy from Malaysia a couple weeks ago about the whole DVD things going on. He said DVD players over there already have region control disabled, or you take it to a place that fixes it. He also said no one buys anything but region 1 DVDs cause the local ones are of such poor quality.
I don't understand, how is this different from gouging people?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Not quite: if you define "piracy" as "undermining theatrical ticket sales by selling video copies when the film industry doesn't want you to" -- which is how the MPAA thinks of it. In their mind, no copy of a film should be legal on video until after the local theatrical release: zoning is their way of enforcing that.
Not to say it's a good idea, of course.
-- Meet the Residents -- http://www.residents.com/
For those who haven't looked at UK dvd prices..
Recent movies range from 15 uk pounds up to around 25 for some of the recent Fox ones (Titanic, Austin Powers 2 etc)
Works out at 24 to 40 US bucks.
However.. why do you assume that DVD's are imported from the US to be sold here? i would be rather shocked is all DVD's were made in the US of A. So shipping them over is a non issue.
All porn DVD's are region free
And where's the moderator with the courage to mark this 'informative'?
Chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
Doesn't a grocery store sell groceries? Just a point but Tescos is not simply a grocery store. They supply a great range of products from food to clothes to electrical hardware and cds. I'm a brit and have been there myself so take it from me, Tesco...much like Asda or Safeways can have quite a large impact upon a market. They did it with designer clothes and sold them cheap as a result.
Just remember that if the world didn't suck we'd all fall off.
This is a straightforward lie. The UK's DTI has been doing a survey of the prices of goods in countries outside the UK and EU and comparing them to domestic UK (and EU ad naueseam) prices.
DVD's were one of the items that were significantly more pricey inside the UK (and EU, blardy blardy blah). I quote from the article
"A recent Department of Trade and Industry survey identified DVDs as being more expensive here than in the United States"
And here is a bit more about that survey..
International American Toilet Paper Conspiracy
==============================================
http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/000219/27/a0dxr.html
/usr/games/fortune > ~/.signature
A quick glance through the back of most UK Hi-Fi Magazines shows most suppliers offer all their players with a regionless option for about £50 more. :->) and paid £30 more to make it regionless. The shop then provides a guarantee for the same duration as the manufacturer would have.
I bought a Samsung 709 (now Matrix compatible
No person I have spoken to was willing to buy a player unless it was region free, and I guess this is the UK market's response to this.
why does this story have a movie icon by it?
my other penis is a vagina
They might end zoning simply because everybody(or their brother) knows there's a way to get around it. I'm glad to see the hi-fi hackers involved.
Zoning is a tacky attempt to levy extra tariffs on DVD's, revenues from which don't return to citizens. We know it's a dirty little ploy; now that it's been broken the industry will be hard-pressed to employ another one, given the investment in CSS.
Hopefully we can continue beating them at their game.
My *mother* wouldn't think of screwing around with hard/software, but she's not even close to typical of DVD users(doesn't own a player, just bought a computer three years ago, has other stuff to do, etc.)
But as long as a small portion of the population informs the rest that there's a way to work around the limits, the rest may realize they ought to be pissed off. The supermarket chain is doing just that--registering a complaint, a.k.a. getting pissed off.
The DVD industry may continue with the region codes--I'm not arguing that--but there are steps we can take to make it stop.
For what it's worth.
Except that some (most?) region 2/3/4/5/6 transfers are done quick-and-dirty (becuase Hollywood will never see them).
The free market responds. DVD is (being) cracked, region settings are removed. It's a free market and when things can't go acoourding to dumb laws, thinga go underground and expand at a dramatic rate. How do you think MSDOS became the most popular DOS ? Because of lack of copy protection.
Yeah we europeans REALLY wanted to be in the EU.
end of democracy (chosen parliment has no veto)
end of stable currency (*obvious*)
end of blaming the french (they do not hate just the Americans, you know)
and god forbid maybe even
end of being the drugs and prositution capital of the world (yeah i'm from Amsterdam)
Not that there was a real democracy of course, otherwise Holland wouldn't have entered the EU in the first place.
But at least every single store sells their dvd players region free.
--
'Kill All Politicians' - Brutal Truth
A CD costs f40-45 here, which is $18-$20.
That's right. This is regular cds in regular stores prices, not imports or other weird cds.
Luckily CDRs are very cheap.
--
'Pirate This Song'-God ate my homework
We're talking about DVD here, not DVD-ROM. We're talking about the way movies are sold. If that isn't related to movies, why not?
Of course what hapening more and more (from what I've seen) is that small houses just release disks without Region codes on them, and consumers either buy a region 1 system (DVD player and DVDs) or else pass on the whole thing.
I think a significant portion of the world players are now set to Region 1, no matter WHERE they are. That alone shuold say something.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Sega and sony do the same thing with their Sega Dreamcast and Sony Playstation.
I find it a bit interesting that nobody is screaming RAPE and UNFAIR w/them? I am an American living in Europe and I am a bit frustrated that I am going to have to purchase another Dreamcast when I get home if I want to purchase any US games.. Very lame.
the very reason that we need to have the region code debate means that there is a monopoly and the free market does not work. there are laws against monopolies/cartels so they can be smashed. think about it: many consumers HATE region codes while some of them don't care. where are the competitors, the entrepreneurs, that immediately jump in and fill the demand for region-code free DVSs? the free market does not work here - instead, people get ripped off by the control freaks of the MPAA/DVD. this is WHY there are cartel laws. sue their pants off, smash the organization, get some competition going, and everything will be OK.
The release dates of the Movies and Theater billings are the Movie Industries Problems. Why should I be made to suffer because they can't get their act together. It is time for them to wake up, the World is getting smaller and the rate information travels it getting faster, they need to keep up, or their market will abandon them.
thanks I spent about two minutes looking at USAtoday.com and ran away screaming. Nice nick, BTW.
--
+&x
Yep, it's piracy if you define piracy that way. And if we define murder to mean "price discrimination" then the DVD cartel is guilty of murder but erm.. you think redefining words on the fly might hinder communication?
Add to this that it is not technically illegal to chip, modify, or hack a DVD player to play all Region discs - but it is illegal for a store clerk to suggest to you how to do it or provide help with it.
Ermm.. what country are you talking about there? I can't think of any laws in the UK that would differentitate between a shop assistant doing that and anyone else doing it, or of any law that would prohibit it at all for that matter.
in the Uk. Basically, it's a user modification to the device - the worst that that can do is negate any explicit or implicit warrenty.
Remeber MPAA's objection to DeCSS is the EULA, which doesn;t exist with hardware.
--
People should also look at Digital VHS. It's region free, recordable, and provides comparable video and audio quality.
Don't buy DVD's until they are economically and technologically sound.
Thinking alters Thinking.
Hey, just show your support to studios that put out "all region compatible" DVDs by purchasing "all region compatible" DVDs. These are quite rare, but I do own one DVD that is :)
supposely "all region compatible", which is Gwar's "Phallus In Wonderland".
-- queef
Well, at least you guys are free to own guns.
Yes... that way, we can overthrow the MPAA.
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
No you'll be the one in jail awaiting your right to a speedy trial on murder charges. If you get cleared on those charges you'll be working your buns off to pay off the attorneys defending you on the wrongul death suit in civil court. After you lose and are fined a couple of million you'll be lying on the ground in the street because you just lost your home and all your worldly posessions.
All because you chose to kill somebody instead of giving them your wallet.
War is necrophilia.
Etymology: French, literally, duck; in sense 1, from Middle French vendre des canards à moitié to cheat, literally, to half-sell ducks
(source: www.m-w.com )
When I was in one of their stores a few weeks ago looking for one, and mentioned to the salesman that I had heard it was capable of playing MP3s, he looked at me like I was from another planet. Here's what their website says about it:
(I didn't check to see if they had any on hand. I already have a computer set up as a DVD/MP3 player (and it's networked, so I can throw MP3s onto one of my servers and play it from there). Still, the AD-600A seems like it has some "geek appeal" or something like that. :-) )
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
CompUSA (of all places) has carried Raite DVD players, though they didn't carry the MP3-capable model(s), last time I checked.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Zoom. Some player manufacturers put this only on higher-end models; I have no idea why. To create a product ghetto, I suppose. Once nice thing is that the Apex (apparently, I haven't been able to verify this personally) will use 16x9 enhancement information for a sharper zoom even on a lousy 4x3 television. A thoughtful touch. I couldn't find a way to pan the zoom window, though.
Just use the arrow keys to pan. Works great. The zoom is really sharp on "The Matrix" but pixelizes bad in lower-res movies. Cool feature.
subject: matrix on dvd
store: hmv
hmv.com (usa) $16.95
hmv.co.uk (uk) GBP 19.95 ($32.00)
nuff said
- tim -= remove "-spam-" from address before spamming =-
Because WTO is against governement barriers, not corporate barriers. What bothers the WTO is that citizen can decide, with the help of their elected governement, how to run their country. The dream world of WTO is one where Microsoft, AOL-Time Warner and Monsanto decide for citizens what they can/can't do, and where governement are powerless organizations with no right at all (because lets face it, if a governement cannot decide how to run the nation's economy, it has no power at all).
See I ask because I had to have a guy I know make me a backup copy of my legally purchased version of Dino Crisis to play in my Playstation (the backup copy had been modified to remove the anti-mod chip code.) Remember, you are allowed to have one backup copy of any software you buy, according to the law. (Dino Crisis is software, even though it is for a Playstation.)
So, it seems to me that it would be foolish to buy an anti-pirate mod chip as an individual, though it might make sense for import stores.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Fortunately, I only play games by the rules... not life.
Company's use region codes to stereotype people by region, "Oh Americans aren't interested in that kind of thing, this wouldn't appeal to people in Thailand, etc..." That's what makes me sick, it is a kind of discrimination.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Australian and UK DVDs use PAL, which has more pixels and therefore better picture quality than American DVDs.
Australian prices are much better than the UK.
But sometimes the American DVD has more extras, which would outweigh the improved picture quality.
To compare American and Australian DVDs, see:
Region 4 Winners and Losers
If it's just about release dates, then why regio zone old movies that are being released in DVD?
I think the zoning is mostly to control distribution pipelines. (I'm in Quebec and I have to wait forever to get recent French movies as zone 1 DVDs, because we have to wait for someone in north america to think the movie is worth it to make the zone 1 version.)
hehe Walmart recently bought the UK "grocery store" ASDA - who sell a lot of stuff other than grocerys - a while ago they had celeron 400 computers there - for £600 - at the time the spec of the machine was pretty good (bear in mind this was in my local ASDA - the one at Monks Cross near York, it where they try all their new stuff before they release to the rest of the ASDA chain) so your store may not have had them.
Don't credit souls where they don't exist. People talk about the "megacorps" so much that they get the mistaken notion that they are a single entity, with one set of goals. Instead, they are a whole bunch of different entities, all with the goal of making money for themselves. This is what the MPAA wants and this is what Tesco's wants. However, the means for the one to make money may often conflict with the means for another to make money. When it happens, "megacorps" war. Perhaps one is in the "right" and one is in the "wrong" according to you, but that is just accidental. It no more shows morals, and is no more on your side than an alligator that pulls down the lion that was chasing you along the river.
The cake is a pie
I can't believe this.. Can someone tell me how to take these guy, put them up to the wall, and shoot them?
I am currently writing to the ACCC (www.accc.gov.au) about region codes and CSS. I would encourage any other concerned Australian citizens to do the same.
If that were the case, then only newly-released movies would be region-coded. However, virtually every disc released by a major US studio is region coded.
AMEN!
That line about "potential trade barrier" had me wondering why the WTO hasn't been called in on this issue. After all, they're against trade barriers, right? And the region code is nothing but a trade barrier...
cartel (kär-tl) n.
1.A combination of independent business organizations formed to regulate production, pricing, and marketing of goods by the members.
2.An official agreement between governments at war, especially one concerning the exchange of prisoners.
3.A group of parties, factions, or nations united in a common cause; a bloc.
This describes the MPAA to a T, does it not? If what you say is true, and I wholeheartedly agree that it is, we should all refer to them as the "DVD cartel." It's a perfectly appropriate description, and it makes them sound like the bad guy!
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Not at all. If someone is going to pirate a DVD, he can simply remove the region coding altogether. Region Coding has absolutely nothing to do with piracy, just as CSS encryption has absolutely nothing to do with piracy. It's about controlling users, and raping them for more money; simply put.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Maybe one that secretly hated the idea of DVD encryption and regionalization as much as we all do. A brother hacker out there somewhere, remaining anonymous, did us all a favor.
Constitutionally Correct
Anyone know if you can buy one of these players online somewhere? The "RAITE" brand is not something I've seen in Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.
Not just in the UK and not just the film industry. I ran into this closer to home, Between Canada and the US of A.
I was looking for a copy of Win2000 Professional Upgrade. A quick call to the local dealer produced a price of 300.00 CDN (206.00USD).
Next step was to look at microwarehouse.com where an upgrade is being offered for $169.95 USD less a 70.00 USD mail in rebate for a net cost of 99.00 USD (143.60 CDN).
Microwarehouse offers on their Canadian web site the same package at 308.00 CDN (212.00 USD)
I tried ordering 4 copies and was told by Microwarehouse US that they were not allowed to ship to Canada by MS.
So a US user pays 99.00 US vs a Canadian user paying 212.00 US. There is no rebate on the Canadian package.
So Why look at the UK for price gouging when we can find it so much closer to home.
Ahh just as an aside i also have to ad 15.51% in Gst and PSt taxes on my purchases locally.
It wasn't flame bate. actually maybe yes it was a little. but mostly I thought it was funny. At least that's the spirit I wrote it in.
Also I didn't write it just for pure giggles. These are the same arguments that other people have been saying. Only they do sound pretty dumb when you express them with multiple spelling mistakes.
Lighten up. Moderate it back up to 1. You know you want to.
Did you try pressing fast forward again?
On my computer, the fast forward will stop being in effect when it reaches another "track" or "file" or whatever. I think the FBI warning and such are in separate files. When I saw that Fast Forward stopped and it started playing a regular speed for the FBI warning, I hit fast forward again and it went fast again. (Also, hitting fast forward a third time makes it go even faster, don't know if that's universally true.)
Are the DVD players available in the US multi-region hackable? I'm in the UK, and know of very few that aren't in fact, most people I know would refuse to buy a player that couldn't be software-hacked, although there's obviously less inclination to buy one that requires hardware mods.
cd-wow
(no, I don't work for them!) who are a UK based company who seem to parallel-import from Europe. They have the top 75 at £8.99 each, including VAT and delivery. I've bought stuff from them, and they seem to be straight up. I'm hoping they will start to stock DVDs soon, or that some other company will follow their lead and parallel import DVDs. I think that the price policies are ridiculous considering audio tapes are available for around £8-10. It must now be way cheaper to duplicate CDs than audio cassettes considering the volumes they ship and the complexity of manufacture.
Interestingly enough, when one of my friends bought a DVD last week, the guy in the high-street store told him that the player could play multi-region, but 'it's illegal to tell you how'. Sounds like some scaremongering going on to me....
Um.... no, you were looking at the VHS prices. Here are the DVD prices:-
Title: Matrix, The (Wide Screen) (DVD)
RRP: £19.99
TESCO price: £ 17.99
Title: Blade (DVD)
RRP: £19.99
TESCO price: £ 17.99
Title: Notting Hill
RRP: £19.99
TESCO price: £ 17.99
Title: Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels (DVD)
RRP: £17.99
TESCO price: £ 15.99
Title: Armageddon (DVD)
Format: DVD
RRP: £15.99
TESCO price: £ 13.99
etc....
I think DVD should drop the region encoding. But they never will because it will cut into sales at inflated prices and may also cut into theater time in other countries. It's all crazy but it works out so that large media corporations that produce them make the most amount of money. God bless capitalism!
Sony has had those region codes on their playstations since day 1, and created a huge market for chips to get around it! Considering how popular the playstation has been for so long, I wonder what would have happened if the region codes would have worked and US gamers would have had to wait for the US versions of games. Would the playstation have been as popular as it is today?
:)
Also makes you wonder how may hard-core gamers buy the Japanese version as soon as it's released, then buy the US version so they can understand what is going on, ok maybe that's pusing it...
Anyone know if this unit, the Apex AD-600A, deals with the difference between NTSC and PAL. Someone brought this up when I was looking for a multi-region unit a while back basically saying that even if I could get a DVD player to play region 2 movies from the U.K. (I'm in the U.S.), that they would play correctly on my television. Is that true, or is this a non-issue?
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
I meant *wouldn't* play.
Must...use...'Preview'...button. Oh well.
Any help would be appreciated.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Now maybe Circuit City will start carrying the Apex DVD player again that has the region code breaking built in:) and an mp3 player and some other nice features. I didnt have the money at the time to buy one. Also maybe we will luck out and the DVD consortium will start to have to split their legal funds fighting 20 or 30 lawsuits of this type and won't have as much money to put into the fight against DeCSS. wihsful thinking I suppose.
I am 31337 or something.
If people have figured how to break the encryption, how much harder is it going to be for these same people to fake region codes? My guess...not too hard. In fact, they could probably write a driver that would auto-sense region and just boot to whatever region your player is.
A lot of pirates (arr!) are located in HK, Taiwan, and Malaysia, and I guess that would be a good reason to set them apart as their own region...at least in the eyes of the DVD makers...however, that region also happens to be the region where I rent most of my movies from. Bastardly MPAA. By the way, if you're in the US, and you're looking for a way around region lock, Circuit City Online was selling the DVD player that ignored the region lock. (At least they were last week when my roomate bought it.)
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
DVDs costing more in the UK is very perdictable. It certainly isn't the first product you can go across the channel and find for less.
Besides a VAT (Value Added Tax) that makes a 9% east coast sales tax look like a deal you have inflated currency, and a confusing system that allows distributors to to mask higher prices. Many times the VAT or a higher price on sterling is blamed for why things simple cost more in the UK than anywhere else in Europe.
Take for instance Beer. You would think buying a pint of Guiness form a pub in the UK would be cheaper than buying it from the store in the States? Afterall, that pint in the States had to travel across the ocean, then buy truck several hundred miles. You'd be wrong. It's about 25% more.
Stocks have been traded in EUROs for some time in the UK, but the normal current is still Sterling (lbs). Consumers are starting to put together that most distributors have a vested interest in keeping the UK from fulling adopting the EU.
Once the UK changes the currency then tarrifs with other EU countries will be gone as well. That means that someone can see what a product costs across the channel in france.
With free trade, and a uniform currency then there is no way to hide the fact that you are screwing the UK consumer.
Of course that won't matter with region coding. If you make it hard to buy other region material then you will have defeated the purpose the the EU in the first place. A wedge of technology that is designed to maximize profits and take the "consumer choice" factor out of the equation.
That being said keep in mind that the inflated prices of UK products is usually going to the UK distributor and not directly to an American company. This is happening in the UK because they are letting it happen, just as we let the DMCA pass will little fanfair in the US.
I have one, as does my brother and a friend, and 2 friends from work have special ordered them. All the I have seen do have the debug "you should not be here" menu, despite rumors that there are some being produced that do not have it. Also, wrt outputs, mine has Composite Video, S-Video and Component outputs and 2 sets of analog stero outs and a coax digital output. To Pan the zoom, use the big directional buttons in the center of the remote.. you cant miss 'em.
See my post "Apex AD600" for answers to your gripes.. http://www.nerd-out.com/apex for more info
This is where things get fun... The UK has a new law coming into force in a couple of weeks time (The Competition Act 1998) which (IANAL) seems to make it illegal to use a dominant market position to control the market. Given that the Office of Fair Trading just published a report showing that DVDs are priced higher in the UK than the US and have already promised to investigate the issue, we could be seeing some serious (Government) action here soon. PS. I did actually post this story at around 1pm GMT...
A lot of pirates (arr!) are located in HK, Taiwan, and Malaysia, and I guess that would be a good reason to set them apart as their own region...at least in the eyes of the DVD makers
Yeah, but what's to stop the pirates in SE Asia from getting discs from each of the regions and pirating them? Nothing. The region-encoding thing absolutely in no way impedes any piracy whatsoever. It's just an attempt to make a few extra bucks and to control things a little tighter....
My wife is from one of those Northern European countries (the place where I quite want to be...) and it would be great to buy DVD's there to bring back and play here (especially for the kids). If they nix the coding - then I'm set, otherwise, oh well.
My sig left me for a younger user id.
Soon the technology will be available so that we can download and freely distribute media without worrying about stupid encryption schemes. Eventually the big corps I going to realize that they have to stop robbing everyone and charging reasonable prices for their products. Until that time, call it what you will, but there will be plenty of underground activity.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
I can see the marketing reasons for releasing films in cinemas at different times in different countries. In the UK, family films are often released to coincide with school holidays - summer, Xmas, etc. The film INDUSTRY is obviously going to maximise its profits any way it can - look at the amount of tripe that get churned out year after year. I think zoning has been more contentious because the film shrinkwrapped product may vary from country to country. Those extras like interviews, soundtracks or other goodies may only be available on an import copy. But if you go into your favourite record shop and buy a limited edition LP from the States you don't have to buy an American deck to play it on.
You may be right about North American consumers organizing and getting Any Zone players, and the MPAA may not really mind letting us get those toys for ourselves. We are the origin zone, and they don't have that much concern about us denting the theatrical release market.
But they want to make sure they keep the marget segmented and fractioned so that they can maximize their profitability in each zone, rather than letting the entire world become a free market.
I think the MPAA figures that things are best for them if the developing world remains an information ghetto.
I doubt they use anything but switching powersuppies nowadaze, which have no problem with different frequencies...it's all converted to DC before it hits the transformer. There might be an issue with the player using the line frequency to sync the ntsc/pal output....but why would anyone use that crappy (Never Twice the Same Color) connection for a DVD?! You can't do the output justice without using AT LEAST 15kHz RGB (console games, arcade game monitors), but you should really use progressive scanning outputs (VGA+ frequencies). Your wallet will take a REAL beating, though!
Ha! After the Wassenaar treaty most EU countries are drafting laws that will make it illegal even to possess 'devices' to circumvent copy protection/encryption etc - as far as I know, of course... Very similar to the US legislation.
It is not piracy, if you actually _buy_ the product from USA. Producers are just protecting their profits. Also, they cannot sell their latest releases for 20 USD in India, so they want to prevent US/European customers buying the Indian versions. Zoning is the main reason why I have not bought a DVD player. I have a habit of ordering some difficult to obtain (in Europe) cult films/series from USA. My VHS can handle both PAL and NTSC - with DVD I never would know what I'd get. Though our local consumer protection laws are quite strict, the problems with international 'e-commerce' would be enormous.
Perhaps this is the way individuals should battle misbehaving corporations in this future. By urging on other megacorps who have vested economic interest in change, change for the better may be possible. After all, the government will never be able to keep up with regulation (nore would we want it to as it's more or less another megacorp.) so why not pursue balance instead?
Perhaps this is the way individuals should battle misbehaving corporations in this future. By urging on other megacorps who have vested economic interest in change, change for the better may be possible. After all, the government will never be able to keep up with regulation (nore would we want it to as it's more or less another megacorp.) so why not pursue balence instead?
They still wouldn't, because only hackers would alter software/hardware in order to avoid zoning. As long as a large portion of the population will still pay more (for sake simplicity or incompetance), they will continue with price discrimination. e.g. imagine your mother trying to do simple hardware alteration.
Why would they end zoning?
After all price discrimiination is what all of the recent events have been about.
Although I do believe in the industries "slippery slope" argument. There's a quote I'm trying to recall from star wars (IV)- When Leia says to Tarkin something like, "The more you tighten your grip the more will slip through your fingers".
Basically a company in Austria mangaged to convince the Europen Court that they should be able to dictate where thier prducts are sold.
This company sold glasses (as in specs) to a company in hungry. A european company then bought the glasses from the Hungarian reseller at a knock down price and imported them back to the EU.
Basically grey imports from outside the EU are illegal.
Sorry if this is not very clear but I have a steaming hangover.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
I would think there is scope for a legal challenge by writers and others paid royalties on sales, that regional pricing prevents them maximising their income and therefore damages them ( this assumes their contract does not base royalties on maximum worldwide price rather than local sale prices)
I have to agree with Cross. The regional codes are more about protecting their "right" to profit gouge rather than to prevent piracy.
Well piracy DOES damage profits. There must however be other ways to prevent piracy
No, no, don't miss the point pal. It's not that it's a GROCERY STORE, it's that the demand for these players went from needing TWO outlets to satisfy to FOUR HUNDRED. It's the sales baby, the sales! Go Go Grocery Store!
It isn't the extra copies of the movie that takes time. Every time and 'big' film is released, the actors and director, must spend some months travelling around advertising the movie. And since they can't be everywhere, will Europe have to wait.
That would be "formal" trade barriers that are put in place by governments of member nations that won't play nice, and only benefit those governments politically at the economic expense of other member nations; not business practices by huge multi-national conglomerates who expect the governments of member nations to come lick their boots when they call, right?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
>Well, at least you guys are free to own guns.
But I'd gladly trade that right in a second if the US could only become a member of the noble and successful EU.
(Thanks for the sarcasm tag, btw. That refined European humour would be too subtle to detect otherwise.)
As I understand it, region encoding was created in large part to prevent DVDs sold in one region from being purchased in another region where they are not available because the movie is still in theatres.
So... if it becomes illegal, do you think it'll be more likely that movie releases will actually occur at the same time in, say, the U.S. and the U.K.? Given the amount of risk this would add onto playing horrible movies (disappointing several nations simultaneously) this might actually encourage the production of one or two decent ones!
Just a thought. I guess I'm getting a bit cynical about having to choose between the 'marketing hype' movie and the 'generation-x' movie every time.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
True, CDs are cheaper in the US - the problem being that lots of good stuff simply doesn't get a US release, due to the US' notoriously music markets conservatism. The result is that I tend to buy a lot of Jap/Euro imports, which tend to run $15-$20 - *more* expensive than the European prices. Well, truth be told, people in the 'States are getting shafted regarding audio CDs too. I'm from Vancouver, BC, Canada and we've got about the lowest CD prices in the world (as far as I can tell).... A new release (top 40-bound) will cost $11.99CDN (~$8US)! Jealous? It's what happens when you've got real competition someplace. (Funny that!) We're lucky enough here to have a well-entrenched (30 yrs old) local chain (A&B Sound) willing to do ANYTHING to be lower then the competitor. 30 years in the business and they're still in the black... you CAN make money that way... At least in Vancouver we realized the dream of CDs being cheaper than tapes...
And I'm not talking really obscure stuff here, albums by Catatonia, Air, Daft Punk, Saint Etienne, all available only on import.
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Nope, that won't happen in the UK, because the regionalization battle for players has been utterly lost by the studios in this country: virtually all hifi and home cinema retailers sell de-regionalized DVD players now, and the major suppliers either offer their own warranties to cover chipped players, or else offer mods that don't alter the hardware and hence don't invalidate the original warranty.
As an example, the Pioneer 717 is one of the best "quality" multi-region-mod'd players, despite being around for a year now, and the prices have plummeted recently. You can get de-regionalized units from literally hundreds of outlets, one of the best being www.techtronics.com as their "E-Mod" maintains your original warranty and is totally transparent (region-switching is automatic). And it plays everything you throw at it, including "difficult" DVDs like The Matrix. I just love mine. And since it allows me to play Region 1 (USA) DVDs on my UK PAL TV, I can happily boycott regionalization by never again buying R2 DVDs. (They're crap anyway, for various reasons.)
Mind you, despite losing the *player* regionalization war, the studios are still pushing regionalized *media* in a big way. The clued-up movie buff is bypassing all that though, simply by buying their DVDs directly over the Internet from the US. It's a win-win situation now that so many players are multi-region, because not only are R1 DVDs better quality, but they're cheaper too. The customer is winning the battle here, at the moment.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I saw it at the Virgin Megastore in Le Louvre, Paris. They sell zoneless DVD players. On top of that, it's about the only kind of appliance they sell there. I guess they do it in order to be able to import the films themselves. Note that Virgin is independent of any music / film distributor.
This seems, in some respects, similar to the DeCSS challenge on the MPAA / DVD-CCA's methods. 'Cept this approach has some $$ (if I could make a pound sign, I'd use that :) behind it.
The funny thing is, I'd bet dollars to DRAM that we won't see a suit over this, nor will anybody be dragged out of their house and questioned all day.
Way to go, Tesco!
I'm considering buying a PSX2 ( play station 2 ) for a DVD player. However, Sony is one of the major 'evil freedom squishers'... how can you purcahse a DVD player without supporting the comanay?
Send in complaints with registraion card?
Buy on eBay, not retail.
What?
Is this serious? How stupid do you have to be to build a DVD player like this? Lets say I have a friend who imports heaps of DVDs from Japan and the US (I do). I live in Oz, so I would naturally have a DVD player that plays the Australian region, whatever that is (I don't). If my hypothetical DVD player has a way of switching regions, but some hidden limit, say 50 changes, I'd probably go through that in a few months. If I get stuck with a non-local region all I'd see is that my DVD player suddenly won't switch back and therefore appears broken. If there's no mention in the manual about this stuff, then I just take it back to the shop and they have to replace it. Retail chains would be livid! It would cost them a fortune in DVD deck returns. How can it possibly be a good idea in anyone's mind - even a middle-manager's?
Moderate up please. This point isn't being made often enough. Without organization all this ranting and preaching to the converted is getting us nowhere.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Hey look. I bought a playstation and i use a game enhancer to play my games. It is 100% LEGAL to use the Game Enhancer, or any similar tool like it, with MY playstation. Sony realises the HUGE market for the Game Enhancer, which plugs into the back of older psx's. They do not have the authority to make them halt production on these units. So what did they do. They changed the spec on the PSX. They removed the paralell port on the back of the new PSXs to "reduce costs". Simple solution. They have the tech. But we will always be able to adjust. My $0.02
you never lose in ure razorblade shoes......Beck-Hotwax
...sort of -- though probably not how you think.
Region codes are, at least in part, the result of the film industry practise of releasing films much later overseas than in North America. Very often, a film won't arrive in theatres in Europe until it's already gone to video in the US. If someone could then sell US videos in Europe, this would undercut the theatrical revenue from the films, since a portion of the potential audience would have seen the films on video.
Tape didn't create much of a problem since the standards conflicts between NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. The film industry was threatened by the idea that there could be one format usable all over the world at the same time, and insisted on the regional codes to allow them to continue with their practise of releasing films later overseas.
Of course, the zoning practise has been seriously undermined by peopel buying Zone 1 DVD players over the 'net.
-- Meet the Residents -- http://www.residents.com/
Alliance/Atlantis, the product of a merger between the two largest film/video distributors in Canada, sells DVDs that are different from the US ones, and got into big trouble (esp from Miramax and Di$ney) for it!
You can only get a Region 1 "Meet the Feebles" in Canada
Some more info at DVDresource and you can buy some at DVD depot
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I hadn't even considered the trade issues in region coding before; I wonder what the WTO would think of them?
I've been saying this since the DeCSS first blew up: what they're really fighting is your ability to bypass region codes. It's obvious that the injunctions aren't about piracy, and no other explanation makes sense (save perhaps rampant cluelessness).
Perhaps I'm wrong. But it will be interesting to see whether they remain so avid about stomping out DeCSS once the the public revolts against region codes.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> How did this come about? Did the MPAA forget to put a restriction in the DVD licence forbidding makers to allow any zone playing?
Just a guess, but they probably forsaw the scale of liability when some court finally struck region codes down. Rather than recall 200 million players, they would just announce the secret workaround. Now it has leaked out in advance for certain players. I won't be surprised to hear that every player has a disablement that Joe User can manage, but would probably never guess.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Secondly, I'm probably end up being long winded, but I think I have something to tell you, which will be of value to you.
The consumer enters an agreement with a retailer/producer, in the intent of keeping their part of the bargain. When it later is shown that the provider has somehow entered that agreement with no intention of giving the consumer the value she expects, the consumer will react.
It's animal instinct.
The question which increasingly is asked is "where is the consumer power?" It is of course in our hands, but to show how that work, we have to use the British Church Lady Option.
Tesco, if I'm not mistaken, is selling lots of environmental friendly goods, and stuff not made by children.
One reason for that is that local parishoners started collecting their reciepts from local super-markets, and totalling them for each month. Then they went to the local store and said, hey, we're using about UKP 10.000,- at your store every month, we wan't certain standards, or we'll go elsewhere.
Consumer power is in our hands, but to use it effectively we have to organize. We have to collect our receipts of DVD, cinema and video rentals for a month or two, then we'll total our amounts and say to the industry: "This is us, slashdotters, we're using around USD 100.000,- each month on movies. Now you follow our lead, or we will stop visiting movies, and rally many more for our cause."
Utopia, perhaps, but look at Great Britain, learn from the parishes there, they started locally, and now stores in Britain is acting.
Sincerely, Paul@conifer-developments.com
The Speedy Viking
At least a couple of hardware manufacturers are benefitting...
While definately not as nice a price as the Circuit City $150-$190. 0950906976@@@@&BV_EngineID=dalhckjeegibe mfcfkmcgcg.0&bookmark=bookmark_0&oid=18772&index=0
:)
Circuit City online has them listed at $179.99
http://www.circu itcity.com/detail.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0228002481
Buy.com also seems to have a limited lot of them for sale also at $255.95.
http://www.buy.com/clearance/ product.asp?sku=70000060
I thought I would throw that in for the geek that must have one and can't find them anywhere else or doesn't want to get out of bed
(also interesting in terms of comparison)
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
It's getting a lot bigger than that. I haven't found it on the web yet, but if you have a dead tree USAToday look at the front page and you'll see that the MPAA, RIAA, CBS, NBS, Disney/ABC, NFL, NBA, NCAA, NHL, and all their business partners have formed the Copyright Assembly, whose first major action was to assure everyone they would sue for each and every copyright infringement they found.
--
+&x
Try this link for an online version.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
To be precise, it is a breach of contract rather than a criminal issue. The police won't arrest the clerk, but if the MPAA gets wind of it then they will sue the clerk's employer, and the employer will fire the clerk.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
I'm really glad to see a corporate entity with somewhat of a soul. In a utilitarian sense, they are just doing what's good for the economy and good for their bottom line: reducing costs to boost profit. Good for Tesco.
Now the question is: How is this done and can off-the-shelf DVD equipment in the United States and Canada be modified in a like way? And what penalty -- if any -- will the MPA (or MPAA... never got the two straightened out) impose upon Tesco for selling a unit which can be made to defeat zones? I view it somewhat akin to overclocking: The manufacturer provides the ability, but assumes no legal responsibility if you screw up. If the device is in your possesion, you should be able to modify it as you wish.
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
They don't believe that any more than Bill Clinton believes that a Lewinsky is not really sex. This rationale is a smoke-screen for cartelization.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
You see I like the sound of the words "Britain's largest supermarket chain" taking the very same people who are responsible for trying to destroy our right to fair use to court for price fixing.
I'm hoping if this keeps up, we'll be able to start using the term "embattled MPAA (or DVD CCA)" or hear phrases like "a dark cloud hangs over the MPAA."
Also this is great, because in my opinion the reason for destroying fair use is the same as the reasons for region coding, to generate profits at the expense of consumer's rights. Having a reasonably big corporation come out and say the same thing is always a plus (provided we are careful... remember when AOL was for open cable access? Welcome them to our side, but don't leave the fight to them.).
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
You shold probable moderate this whole fucking thread up (well posts which give information about getting regionless DVD players anyway). The more people know how to get a regionless DVD player the better off we are! Actually, moderation is insufficent, we really need to post a whole slashdot feature explaining all the tricks and giving a FAQ for getting regionless DVD.
Also, if you live in Europe you are one of the people getting directly fucked over by the MPAA. One form of protest which I think would be VERY effective is to buy yourself a regionless DVD player, buy american DVDs of movies before they are released in Europe, take your DVD and Player to a local bar and watch the DVD with your friends.. and hand out fliers about how people can get their own regionless DVD player and why they should fight the MPAA. Europe has a real chance to avoid the crap like the DMCA that has happened in the U.S. so we you really need to build some political support. This sort of protest will raise awairness, screw the MPAA out of ticket sales, and be lots of fun!
Questions: Dose the DVD lissensing restriction keep independant film makers from having as much force in the market? And is there much of an argument that the MPAA is using DVD to force European film studios to be beholden to US corperations?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The Hitachi DVP-250 is region free. I bought one whilst in the UK and have had success with both region 2 & region 5 disks. Mind you, it was rather expensive, but has S-Video out, digital out (for DTS) zoom & a whole raft of other features.
There is another implication here too:
If the information is out how to make a particular brand of DVD player regionfree, sales go to the sky. Now all marketing has to do is leaking the relevant information somehow and get it public ("We are very concerned about site XXX distributing DeZonePhonyPlayer.zip but what can we do about it?"). We can encourage this starategy by circulating that information even further, especially which players are prone to DeZoning.
The implicit punchline here: "It's not a bug, it's a feature."
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Whilst I dislike some of Tesco's policies, they have recently done several similar things to try to reduce the cost of overpriced goods. They unofficially imported Levi jeans from the US, as they're extortionately expensive over there. That landed them in trouble with Levi's. Then they did the same with expensive perfumes - again pissing off the manufacturers. A few weeks ago, they announced that they are going to start importing cars from Europe*, where they are much cheaper than here in Britain.
Now they want to import cheap DVD's, I guess. Good luck to them. Maybe if more large companies put pressure on the film industry, this fscking stupid zoning will be dropped.
HH
* OK, technically Britain is part of Europe, but we don't always see ourselves that way.
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
If any of you have been in the UK and looked at CD prices, they're just massively inflated as well (at least the last time I was there). It's not limited to DVD media sadly. The prices I saw were a good 20% higher. I noticed the problem in other countries as well. I brought my CD collection and used it to trade with some people I knew for some other things, worked pretty well.
Did the MPAA forget to put a restriction in the DVD licence forbidding makers to allow any zone playing?
Doesn't look like it: check out what the DVD-CCA is saying:
<url: "http://www.dvdcca.org/dvdcca/rcp.html">
--
314-15-9265
If I buy a DVD, and travel to the UK, why should I not be able to play my DVD on a friend's DVD player in that zone? The DVD was purchased, it should be completely legal.
To a limited extent, I can understand that it can slow pirating; since the pirates must buy an original to copy from each zone in which they plan to sell it. However, for an industry making the kind of money found in piracy, do you really think that having to buy seperate originals for each zone's encoding is really going to stop anything? It's as absurd as the concept that encoding slows pirating. The pirates down't care about the encoding, they copy the fully encoded data and burn it back onto a disk identically.
The only pirate slowed by these techniques are the relatively low tech/low volume home copier. Not an adequate offset to the effect of preventing the consumer from freely making legal use of what they purchased.
It hurts foreign language teachers more so. PAL NTSC is a big enough pain for them. They have to buy special decks that convert the signals so that their students can be more in touch with the culture. Now, with DVD region zoning, they would have to buy special DVD players just so they can show a foreign film. Now, in my German class, my teachers shows lots of foreign films and various other snippets of TV and such that is usually recorded in PAL. She bought a special VCR to play them, now if she wants to show the original German version of say Run Lola Run, she has to buy a special (and possibly illegal?) DVD player. I think that's a bit excessive for "preventing piracy".
kc8apf
Maybe they should file a complaint with the WTO (yes, the World Trade Organization). Isn't this what the WTO is for?
// TODO: fix sig
I find it hard to believe that Film studios still cling to the belief that region codes are about piracy. They stop no-one pirating a DVD, just as if they wern't there it would not help people to pirate them.
As many other people have said, it is a method of stopping us in the UK buying cheap DVD's from America. We can buy them from Amazon, + postage for about 4 GBP less than they cost here.
I am surprised they have not started to sue the writers of the software that disables region checking.
If I had a lot of money I would certainly take them to court here in the Uk on the basis of it being anti-free trade.
I honestly don't know if that law's set in stone, you'll obviously have seen magazine adverts for shops that offer code free players, but that was my experience.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
The price of the DVD isn't the biggest issue, nor even the timing of its release for that matter.
So you live in the U.S. or in Australia, and you happen to speak French. The French put out a great new movie, and you want to watch it. Say it's not released in the English speaking countries - it's only of interest to French speakers. So the the only way you can get a copy of it is by ordering it from France.
But there, because of the bloody zoning restrictions, you're stuck. The DVD is made for the European zone, you live in the U.S. or in Australia or wherever, so you can't play the DVD, and you have no way of getting the DVD in your own zone.
The whole zoning thing stinks. It's enough to put me off buying a DVD. All the best of luck to Tesco! Good on them for taking a stand against this stupidity!
Rizzer
Try here.
Sorry
Sadly, the Wharfedale DVD players sold out very quickly, so I ended up getting one from Dixons (big UK electrical goods retailer) instead. This also had a region hack on the remote where by pressing a couple of buttons you get prompted for region code... This works brilliantly!
Quite a lot of DVD players for sale here have similar hacks. There's a very good page here
If not, there are loads of places who will open the player up and tweak it...
OK - so there are other differences, such as PAL here, NTSC in the states. But most modern TV sets sold here in the last few years should cope admirably. I've got a three year old Sony and it shows NTSC perfectly.
The whole region thing is rampant protectionism - designed to stop us importing from another country where prices may be cheaper. So the UK branch of a film company charges more and tries to stop people getting the same movie from their US branch where it's cheaper and has more extras.
There's also the censorship angle - where a Region 2 DVD sold in the UK will be subject to BBFC (British Board of Film Censorship) cuts.
But it looks like some companies have got the right idea. It could be that many companies making DVD players don't give a toss about the region system and deliberately leave a back door - easily accessible through the remote - so that those of us who want to can get around the whole stupid region thing.
I can buy books from America. I can buy CDs from America. Why the heck shouldn't I be allowed to buy a DVD from America - with lots of extras (documentaries, etc) which aren't available on the Region 2 version?
"Information wants to be paid"
The zoning not only places absurd limits on movies, it can also render your DVD player useless. Many manufacturers of DVD players, both hardware and software accounted for the fact that some people may move during the time they owned a DVD player and allowed the changing of the zone to your current residence. However, there is obviously a limit on the number of times you can change the zone, or you could change it for every movie. If you happen to change the zone to watch a foreign DVD and you have maxed out the number of times you can change, you're SOL if you want to watch a North American movie, so choose wisely...
First, choose your enemies wisely. Fighting some poor teenager from the frozen wastelands is easy. Fighting gigantic megacorps is hard. The DVD thought police are making dangerous enemies, enemies on their own turf (see, hackers (in the non-perjorative sense) are not going to fight the battle on their turf. Other corporations will, tho).
Second, what 13-headed hydra of a committee DESIGNED their encryption specs? This is the second glaring hole found.
---
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Early DVD decoder cards for PCs were pretty much wide-open. You could change your region code at will. Now, more and more decoder cards have a little EPROM (or somesuch) that counts the number of region changes, and if it's changed around too much, it will stop allowing you to change the region code and you'll be stuck.
Some cards will set the region code based on the first DVD you play (more "user-friendly" that way), and if you happen to have a multi-region DVD, you're stuck thinking the damned thing doesn't work.
Decoder card manufacturers naturally don't like to advertise this, nor are DVD manufacturers hot to talk about zoning, because most people keep the player in one region and won't use DVDs from other regions.
The media types will one day discover that you can't increase profits by throwing roadblocks in front of your customers.
-dwd-
<SARCASM>
Well, at least you guys are free to own guns.
</SARCASM>
Reminds me of drug dealers.
The rot has spread to the UK too.
On two consecutive mornings this week, the morning news programme on BBC Radio 4 carried "reports" where BPI (British Phonographic Industry, i.e. the UK's record industry body) told how widespread piracy was putting everyone in the media industry out of business. Then they went on to interview senior police officers who verified this. There was an air of unreality about the whole thing, though. The people interviewed were hardly well-known; I guess you can always find someone to support your view whatevr it happens to be, especially if it means they get to go "gee, look ma, I was on the radio".
But in the second programme, things took a distinct turn for the worse. After a police officer spoke first, we heard somebody declaring that the same people running "piracy" operations on CD's were also dealing in arms, hard drugs and illegal hard pornography! They said it was a fact that the revenue from piracy of CD's and videos was financing arms for terrorist outfits.
But that's not all...immediately after that quote, they then had a guy come on who reiterated the arms connection, a guy speaking in an Irish accent.
I'm convinced by this that the BBC are seeking to manipulate public opinion on behalf of the BPI and other allied bodies. I suppose they think they are protecting their own interests since the BBC have a huge storehouse of recorded material that they see as "intellectual property" which can be ripped off.
It just saddens me to see the BBC stooping so low. Misinformation and cynical manipulation we might have expected from big business and politicians, but to see the BBC doing this just makes me sick to my stomach.
So the UK too is now at war. Only, most people don't know it and probably never will before those evil bastards manage to silence us forever.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Hmmm. A little extrapolation...
A manufacuturer makes a DVD player that allows you to play discs from any zone and sales sky rocket. Other mfgs, needing to compete, also make their players to play any zone. Pretty soon "Any Zone Play" becomes a standard selling feature on all DVD players. So even if MPAA continues its practice of zone ecrypting its products, it is all moot.
So here we have a customer and (foreign) retailer rebellion that will lead to the defeat of the zoning scheme. It's easy to see the supermarket's concern: it stands to lose sales to Internet orders from the US. Of course, once some entrepreneur in India or Zimbabwe starts up an Internet DVD sales site, even North Americans will be flocking to buy Any Zone players and US and Canadian retailers will be demanding and end to zoning.
How did this come about? Did the MPAA forget to put a restriction in the DVD licence forbidding makers to allow any zone playing? Or was there some loophole in the wording that allows the players to be switchable manually, but perhaps not automatically?
And what is the MPAA going to do about it? Are the going to take the manufacturers to court to try to stop them? Even if they have grounds based on the DVD licence, might they risk having the whole scheme challenged as violating international trade laws?
And how does this situation affect the DeCSS fiacso? With zoning being made moot, is there any point to even needing a licence to make a player? Even if the ulterior motive is to get a precedent ruling on a DMCA reverse engineering situation, this mooting of region coding would seem to take some strength out their prima facie arguments of the sacredness of their disc encryption.
Ideology is for ideots.
Enought people here seem to not know why country codes exist, that I feel it makes sense to go over the reasoning. I'm not saying that this is sound business practice, or that it's justified. I'm just explaining the reasoning.
The basic problem is that most of the worlds most popular Enlgish-speaking movies are made in the United States (some of that is changing with Canada, New Zealand and the UK producing more and more winners). Because of this, movies tend to be released in the US first. Now, they can't really release them in more than one to three countries at a time (just doing the whole US is quite a strain) because of the logistics. You really want to have a big media event surrounding the release, so you gather up some of your actors and crew and screen the movie for select folk with a red carpet and lots of photographers.
Ok, given that you do that one to three countries at a time, and schedules are hard to sync up, you very often wind up in the situation that by the time the film is opening in some late-on-the-list part of the world, the video release has hit shelves in the US. So, you show up to do your premier and everyone yawns, 'cause they've been buying import versions for weeks.
What's worse, the money that a movie makes tends to be in the form of 1/2 of a bell-curve (the descending part) for the theater release and a much more gradual, but simmilarly shaped curve when the video comes out. So, if you reduce the impact of opening weekend, you might easily lose a major chunk of the sales for the box-office, and that sales boost you were expecting from the video release is now moot.
There are holes in this theory, and let's face it, Hollywood is not run on quality data-gathering operations. Personally, I think that staging one huge opening per movie and broadcasting it to the world simultaneous with the release of the film in theaters would make more sense, at least for the english-speaking countries. It would require more pre-release work because you have to go through the censorship machinery of all of those countries before your release, but the impact would be greater, I suspect. You could move around, and have the opening for each film be in a different country, thus allowing people in those countries to get access. Certainly the first bunch of films that did this would get huge amounts of press.
But, it's probably better to just let Hollywood die under the weight of foriegn competition. More and more work is moving out to Canada and NZ, and this is good. Hollywood will have to develop new ways of coping. In a way, what's going on now reflects what happened in the comic book industry in the late 80's and early 90's. Back then independants were becoming wildly popular, because they dared to have original content. In the end, the result was that most of the indies went broke when the market consolidated, a few strengthened and did well (e.g. Dark Horse) and DC (Superman, Batman, et al.) ended up creating a whole section just for doing interesting adult-themed, story-focused "comics" that didn't all center on super-heroes (e.g. Sandman, which has been mentioned a couple of times on Slashdot). This is essentially what Hollywood is in the middle of. Content is slowly winning.
As for country codes, it's just an artifact, a minor spin-off of these industry forces. The whole idea will seem foolish in 10 years. How can country codes prevail once movies are delivered over the Internet? I'm waiting for the day when every theater has 2 screens dedicated to showing whatever an on-line vote picked for the day. Once theaters can download movies and pay on a per-play basis instead of locking in weeks at a time, they will be able to offer whatever non-in-first-run movies will fill a theater. This will allow popular movies to keep making money in the theater even after they're on video. Right now, theater owners don't want to lock-in to a movie that's already on video, 'cause they can't guarantee that people will come see it in the theater vs. watching it on video.
Wow, this rambled a bit more than I had wanted. I think I'll stop now.
Did you know that, the release of the DVD format was delayed at least a year because hollywood refused to accept a digital format that could mean the end of the NTSC/PAL pseudo control they had until then? Since a movie could be stored in mpeg2 at 24 frames/s, and then the device could output the signal at PAL or NTSC or whatever in real time; the studios would inmediatly loose the pseudo restriction they had by delaying the release of the movies on video in the proper format (aka, the other non NTSC ones) that prevented "too many people" doing casual imports (since they had to buy extra equipment, to view NTSC, etc) it seems that they still are unaware of the very popular pseudo-ntsc capability that many "non NTSC" devices had all these years, since for them its very simple to view NTSC imports than for us is to see PAL... Anyway region codes and macrovision were added at the last moment, and even then only half of them agreed to support DVD. See, the format was never intended to use those "features" on the first place; that's why they were so simple to "ignore", even from day 0; early DVD players don't even seek for the region code byte or even have the macrovision chip.
With the crack of CSS, stupid hollywood fears on loosing control would rise again against the format, and that explains the current DVDCA attitude; althought it never justifies it. Will the DVD format die? If manufacturers go subversive and start making non compliant devices; ignoring DVDCA complains (although they would have problems for sales in the US) therefore making DVD players as cheap as they really are, it will then last way longer than expected; even without Hollywood contempt, alternate markets will take their place (say, what you insist to call pirates) and many, many devices will be sold worldwide; with or without studios blessings. They could take advantage by adopting it and forget about their stupid already lost control on "movie release schedule" (it's more let the middlemans be happy) or go totally against it (Hi J. Lucas) and let the alternate market take full control (and revenue).
The way you see it, DVD manufacturers could always win, many of them are also part of the "Consortium", and hey! they even own some of the studios too! (Sony anyone?) Of course if the format is pushed to the death (very unlikely now that *anyone* can make their own player, the real treat of DeCSS to the Consortium) they would lose, So if the MPAA don't pay more attention, they could make angry some of their big Associates...
In the end, we will all use Opendvd, or "unlicensed" or whatever digital open format we see fit (even VCDs with mpeg2 video aka SuperVCDs aka VCD2s get distributed by alternate means these days); they could be against their customers, or with them; they may get some of the revenue or none at all, they may adopt or kill the format, we will see. One thing is clear, the way they used to do things, vertically by maintaing an iron grip control over their customers is over. Same goes to Music Recording Industries; only that we don't need them already anymore, with CD-Rs and MP3s.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
I guess they only make x prints of a film for movie theatres, and then ship them around the world, first in the US, then Europe, then Asia, etc. This is to avoid the cost of making a copy of the film for every theatre in the world.
What can happen is that movies are available on video/DVD in the US before they have even played in theatres elsewhere. They want to prevent people from buying (or worse, renting) the DVD instead of going to the theatres.
Add to this the idiocy of the BBFC: they demand that SUPPLEMENTS on DVDs, such as outtakes and making of documentaries, need a BBFC certficate in order to pass, henceforth the DVD producer has to submit that material and a fee to the BBFC. This is supposedly one of the reasons Criterion doesn't release their discs in the UK.
Add to this that it is not technically illegal to chip, modify, or hack a DVD player to play all Region discs - but it is illegal for a store clerk to suggest to you how to do it or provide help with it. All European DVD players can play NTSC or PAL - and several have super easy hacks to defeat the coding, such as a combination to put in the remote. Search the web and thou shalt find...
Now it gets even weirder. Some DVDs in the UK are released as anamorphic (enhanced for widescreen TVs) when they aren't in the U.S. because of wider market penetration of widescreen TVs in Europe.
Region Coding is extremely defeatable. I recommend heartily anyone with a Windoze system to watch DVDs on to use the Creative Labs DXR3 kit - a DVD drive, and a dedicated decoder board ready for 5.1 surround sound for 150 - 200 US dollars. Go to This site and download a 500 k app that lets you defeat region coding piece o cake. Basically, for about 150 dollars for DXR3, 300 dollars for my Videologic 5.1 surround kit, and a simple app I have a region free DVD player routed to my 16x9 capable television.
I buy some Region DVDs of movies that haven't been released here in the U.K. because a) I'm an American, moving back to America in a year, and I want DVDs that will work there b) American DVDs tend to have more supplements and c) A movie in Central London will litearally cost you 20$ for a decent seat. This way I can watch a movie without a dim projector bulb and crappy reel changes and some idiot's mobile phone going off while they're talking during the movie.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
Maybe next time you should read the story all the way through. I think it's apparent by the third paragraph that the movie industry is truly concerned about the rights of the consumer:
I hope this silences anyone who would accuse the movie industry of any less-than-noble intentions.
is called the RAITE AVPhile 715. His GF bought it for about $150 from Frys Electronics. Not only does it play DVDs, but also CDs, VCDs, and MP3s (ISO formatted). I think it's manufactured somewhere in Europe.
*AND* we learned on the net that you can shut off region codes & Macrovision with certain sequences on the remote control.
I found this too while looking for something else: http://www2.datatestlab.com/regionhacks/ - it seems to have info for circumventing regions on multiple players.
thought someone might be interested,
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I expect that, since someone in the UK press has published information on how to circumvent controls on accessing copyrighted material, that the MPAA will file a lawsuit (or they will find someone in the UK willing to file on their behalf) posthaste.
I mean, if a couple of "evil hackers" in Norway can't write a program to get around CSS, then why should "the hi-fi press" (?) in the UK be able to publish information on how to hack the units themselves?
And isn't it interesting that the ones that can be set to play any region discs have skyrocketed in popularity? Now, would that be because people (the people in Britian, anyways) value the freedom that OpenDVD, the EFF and others are championing on our behalf? Or is the MPAA and their apologists going to try to claim that the owners of these DVD players are all pirates?
Jay (=
Yeah....just like DeCSS is designed to maximize piracy. Sure.
I'm a firm believer in allowing market forces to dictate the state of the market. DVD zoning is not a piracy prevention tool. It's an electronic measure for specifying market barriers - barriers which, in this age, should not be defined by artifical means. If I want to watch an imported Japanese porn flick on my plain-vanilla Pioneer DVD player, I should have every right to. If I want to watch a classic French film brought here from Europe, the same goes. Having a zoning system in place restricts perfectly legitimate uses of the DVD system and allows orchestrated price controls (like those that Tesco is fighting against) to exist.
Now, granted, I am not a professional economist and can't speak for trade barriers, import restrictions, tariffs, etc. But the whole point of economic measures like those is allow the market to dictate the price of goods. If a Euro-zone DVD costs more to import because of a set tariff, then fine! If I'm willing to pay the price then I should at least have the ability to view the film. If UK DVDs are being priced artificially high, however, that's allowing the industry to leverage monopolistic price controls (i.e. zoning) and shouldn't continue.
"Here here" to Tesco.
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
"Film studios say zoning is designed to minimise piracy. But Ms Cross said it was 'against the spirit of free competition and a potential trade barrier. We'll fight so the prices come down.'"
I have to agree with Cross. The regional codes are more about protecting their "right" to profit gouge rather than to prevent piracy.
We can defeat their regional codes.
We can defeat their weak encryption schemes.
Why don't they learn their lesson and just sell us our movies in a sensible way?
...without having to do any hardware mods to the player (there are geeks who fear hardware). :)
Slashdot covered this a while back, but what you want is the Apex AD-600A. You can get it at Circuit City for between $150 and $190 (CC has been playing with the price in different parts of the country, a "region-coding" of their own, I guess -- Circuit City can't be all good, now, they've got that DiVX legacy of evil to keep up with).
CC doesn't keep them on the shelves, but just have the sales droid punch in "APX AD-600A" into his terminal if he doesn't know what you're talking about.
When /. covered this product it was mainly over its ability to play MP3's. I don't personally care too much about that, but here's what I do like:
The disadvantages, in my opinion:
Anyway, many of the above ergonomic limitations could be overcome by revisions to the firmware, I'm sure. And there seems to be enough of a hacker community around this player that people might just end up hacking the firmware (you'd have to buy an EEPROM replacement for the existing firmware chip, though -- while socketed for easy replacement, it is not reprogrammable). I wonder if Apex is nuts enough to open-source their firmware and turn the geeks loose on it?
Oh yeah, how to get to the loopholes menu: without a disc in the player, "SETUP" -> select the preferences item -> "STEP" -> chapter/track back "|<<" -> chapter/track forward ">>|". Have fun...
Address-collecting spam robots don't know how to crack ROT13. Do you?