Hitchhiker's Guide DVD to be released on January 28

hitchhacker writes "It looks like The BBC series version of 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' is being released on DVD January 28, 2002. 'disc set contains all six episodes from the classic BBC sci-fi comedy as well 10 minutes of additional footage which was cut to acheive the 30 minute run time. Also included are a few additional features - making of, deleted scenes, interviews and more.'" CD: Word has it that this is a region 2 dvd.

Comments

Remember the movie?

[YouAreFatMan]

I remember, the first 10 minutes were the worst. The next 10 minutes, they were the worst. The next 10 minutes after that were even more horrible. After that, it went into a bit of a decline...

Re:And how do regions...

[SkulkCU]

Well, if you can't even view it outside of a single DVD region, it's not much of a guide to the galaxy, now is it?

Re:Region two?

[tunah]

Yeah, finally the region coding is effective. They've managed to stop you buying a copy to play at home (they frown on 'fair use'), and forced you to download a DVD rip from kazaa.

Re:why on earth?

[forged]

The purpose of region encoding is to ensure that a movie leaving US markets can be "staged" into foriegn markets

You're forgetting that other countries produce film material, too. The region coding in this case is to ensure EU marget gets served first before anyone else can get it.

Region encoding [...] serves no purpose other than to simultaneously reduce sales and annoy customers.

I couldn't agree more with this statement.
Now imagine that this would be the case for you almost every time a movie comes out on DVD. Annoying, eh?

Why would the BBC want to stop sales of this DVD to the US? The math is simple...more sales means more money ...

Your point is also valid viewed in the other perspective. Why would the US firms possibly want EU and other zones to wait sometimes 6 months or 1 year, to get the material on DVD ? See all the points above.. Makes no sense to me.

BBC DVD region coding

[e6003]

BBC DVD releases are usually regions 2 and 4. The reason for this (more specifically, no region 1) is because BBC Worldwide handles the marketing of BBC video releases in the UK and Australia/NZ. However for the US it sub-licences the rights and BBC video releases are issued by Warner, who decide their own release schedule. It's because of this contract that the discs employ region coding to "prevent" them being played in the US. Although you can import the release and use a region-free player, remember you will need a PAL (or dual-standard) TV set and these are AFAIK less common in the US than they are in Europe! This applies even if using a computer DVD drive to play the disc, unless you just want to view it on your monitor.

Off-Topic: The Whale

[ewhac]

This is easily one of my most favorite of Adams' explanations on where he got an idea. This is a quote from The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts:

"Ah yes, the whale. Well, this came about as a result of watching an episode of a dangerously insane TV detective show called Cannon in which people got shot the whole time for incredibly little reason. They would just happen to be walking across the street, and they would simply get killed, regardless of what their own plans for the rest of the day might have been.

"I began to find the sheer arbitrariness of this rather upsetting, not just because characters were getting killed, but because nobody ever seemed to care about it one way or another. Anybody who might have cared about any of these people -- family, friends, even the postman -- was kept firmly offstage. There was never any, 'Good night sweet Prince,' or, 'She should have died hereafter,' or even, 'Look you bastard, I was meant to be playing squash with this guy tonight,' just bang, clear them out of the way, on to the next. They were merely, excuse me, Cannonfodder.

"I thought I'd have a go at this. I'd write in a character whose sole function was to be killed for the sake of a small detail in the plot, and then damn well make the audience care about it, even if none of the other characters in the story did. I suppose I must have succeeded because I received quite a number of letters saying how cruel and callous this section was -- letters I certainly would not have received if I had simply mentioned the whale's fate incidentally and passed on. I probably wouldn't have received them if it had been a human either."
-- Douglas N. Adams

Schwab

Re:why on earth?

[Zeinfeld]

Well, I agree that it's annoying, but as much as I hate to admit it I can sort of see the logic for Region encoding for films . I still don't like it, but I see the logic.

The purpose of region encoding, from start to finish was to support differential pricing. The story about movie releases is a smokescreen. If the industry execs. stated that the purpose of zone encoding was to allow them to maintain DVD prices in Europe that were double those in the US they would end up in jail.

In fact they may still end up with a huge fine. The EU commission is investigating the DVD zone encoding scam and unlike the US regulators they are not easily bought off with Enron sized campaign contributions.