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Father of DVD Interviewed
An Anonymous Coward writes "Interview with Koji Hase. Talks about some of the interesting history behind the DVD format, copyright protection, and competing formats for audio."
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I always hated this argument because old movies that are no longer in theaters are also put on region locked discs.
Examples of region locked discs (from IMDB):
* The Wizard of Oz (1939)
* Gone with the Wind (1939)
* Snow White (1937)
* Tron (1982)
* Star Trek 1 (1979)
* Casablanca (1943)
* The Maltese Falcon (1941)
I could go on and on and on.
The real reason for region control is price fixing, plain and simple.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Examples of region locked discs (from IMDB):
[snip]
I could go on and on and on.
The real reason for region control is price fixing, plain and simple.
I kinda bought Hollywood's "we want to stagger DVD release dates because we need to stagger cinema releases because we don't have enough prints to go round" argument until I noticed this for myself a couple of months ago (not having really paid much attention to DVD until then...)
This is basic economics; if you're able to artificially segment your market, you'll optimise the total revenue by charging the most each segment will pay for your product. Without region coding, europeans like me would probably be importing all our DVDs from S-E Asia or the US where they're cheaper.
Playing the DVD game ensures you'll get screwed by the content publishers because the rules have been set by them entirely to their advantage. I've chosen not to play (apart from region-free discs such as music...)
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The one thing I wish were done a little differently with DVD (from the perspective of one who occasionally needs to author them) is the menu system. Instead of DVD's convoluted, proprietary menu implementation, I'd really prefer to see something like Flash or even dynamic HTML with Javascript. Imagine what DVD creators could do if they knew every DVD player had a Flash interpreter... (acknowledging of course that Flash was in a much more primitive state back when DVDs were being developed, if it even existed at the time :])