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."

Comments

Pet Peeve and question.

[line-bundle]

The worst thing I find about DVD is region encoding. Why is it there? It seems they wanted to put something to replace the PAL/SECAM/NTSC barrier. But I feel it might not help at all because people will (are?) buying Region 1 DVD player (I am from region 6 or thereabouts and things only appear for our region after decades).

And a question. Is the NTSC stuff encoded on the DVD or is it an artifact of the conversion from digital to analong of the image?

Re:Pet Peeve and question.

[l1gunman]

The 'logic' behind region encoding is to allow the motion picture industry to phase the release of movies across the globe.

Not all movies are released at the same time in all countries. They usually are released in the US first, Europe and Japan next, etc. A movie may actually be released on DVD or VHS in the US before it hits the theatres in some countries.

Regional playback controls are thus an attempt to keep DVD sales from eating into theatre revenues in countries where theatre release is significantly later in time than it is in the US.

I don't agree with it, but that's the reason.

What if the hokey-pokey really is what it's all about?

Re:Pet Peeve and question.

[Jordy]

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.

Re:Pet Peeve and question.

[cowbutt]

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):

[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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Re:Pet Peeve and question.

[sph]

The worst thing I find about DVD is region encoding. Why is it there?

The original idea was to prevent importing movies on DVD from other regions before they actually hit cinemas locally. The point has become somewhat vague, because many discs are released only on some region, so many people have to resort to importing to get all the stuff they like. Interestingly, lately many blockbusters have opened at cinema almost simultaneously worldwide, which is definitely a good development. I wouldn't be surprised if this was at least partly because of the DVD importing still being possible despite region codes.

It seems they wanted to put something to replace the PAL/SECAM/NTSC barrier.

That barrier still exists on DVDs, but it's easier to overcome than with VHS. There are PAL and NTSC discs. Every PAL player can also play NTSC discs, but only some NTSC players can play PAL discs. If component signal is used (RGB is very common in Europe) you don't have to bother with color encodings, only whether your television can sync to 50/60Hz and display all the lines needed.

Is the NTSC stuff encoded on the DVD or is it an artifact of the conversion from digital to analong of the image?

Picture on DVD is fully digital MPEG-2, hence it has no NTSC, PAL or SECAM color encoding. Picture resolution and FPS still match either NTSC or PAL (SECAM has same specs as PAL, so there are no SECAM discs), because almost every display device used with DVDs still uses them. NTSC resolution on DVD is 720x480, while PAL is 720x576. Player handles 2:2 (PAL) or 3:2 (NTSC) pulldown on film material, and is also responsible for generating actual NTSC/PAL/SECAM color encoding if something else than component signal is used in connecting player to the display device. Needless to say, using component signal gives the best image quality you can achieve without going progressive, because it requires no additional signal format conversions after DA-conversion.

It's also good to note that because of the slight differences between NTSC and PAL discs, well-encoded PAL disc has better picture and smoother movement than well-encoded NTSC disc.

Flash or HTML

[captaineo]

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 :])