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DVD Region Encoding on Verge of Collapse?
Spudley writes "It seems like the infamous Region Encoding system used by DVD manufacturers to prevent us buying disks from overseas is about to collapse - due to widespread flaunting of the system. This article on the BBC doesn't go into much technical detail, but does include an interview with a company that manufactures DVD players ("You can find codes for more or less all brands of DVD player including ours") and some speculation on the future." It always seemed like an idea destined to fail.
Its usually because of the licensing and copyright restrictions by the artists and manufacturing companies.
When someone wants to put a soundtrack or put an actor on a movie, they have to specify who they are distributing it to in the contract.
So usually they sometimes go this anime sound track can only be distributed in Japan. No where else.
Or this European actor can only be shown in theaters playing in Russia.
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Strictly economics. The studio wants to control the spread of the movie to maximize profit.
Movies often open in the US 6-9 months before they show in Europe. In many cases, the US DVD is out before the move has opened in Europe. With region codes they make it hard for Europeans to buy the DVD instead of going out to the theater.
Here is the press release from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's investigation into the legality of Sony's region encoding. Here is Sony's response. Here is more info about the ACCC's stance. And Here's what aussies think of it all.
is a particularly cool company. If you haven't heard of them they make very very cheap DVD players. Like 60 bucks for some of the models. As far as I know they were the first to have "cheat codes" to unlock regions. And some people are paying hundreds for region free players! The really cool thing about Apex players is that some of the models have PAL converters in them. So you will really have no problem watching DVDs from England or anywhere else.
Be warned though. Apex's players are 60 bucks for a reason. They are made of cheap parts and cheap plastic. Basically they are pieces of crap, and the region changing/pal converting is the only feature they have. I don't even think they all have optical audio out. Yeah, so check them out, it's the cheapest solution I've found.
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If it were just a matter of scheduling releases (which is the most often cited reason for the coding), then they wouldn't include region coding except on recent movies. But look at DVDs of classic movies; they're all region coded.
Why?
They want to maximize profit by charging different prices in different markets. They know that if they set the price 50% or 100% higher in some region, then people will import from the cheaper region. Region coding is supposed to stop that. In practice, this is the main reason that people want to bypass region coding--cheaper discs from other regions.
The easy way out is to start in few countries, collect money, recoup your advertising expenses, and reinvest into advertising in another country or group of countries. This way you only need N million dollars regardless of how many countries you sell the movie to. This, of course, takes time, and that's where the delay comes from.
Some of the bigger studios (notably Fox) are starting to use something called 'Region Code Extension' (RCE) on their disk. With this the first commands the DVD player find on the disc are (in pseudo code):
let r = Region Code;
if(r == 1)
jump to movie
else
jump to naughty person page
endif
Where 'jump to naughty person page' jumps to a still-frame saying somthing like 'You can't play this disk in this region'. A multi-region player can't cope with this since it reports its region mask as 0xff so will still jump to the still-frame.
Only a plyer set to play region 1, and only region 1 can play the disk. Hence to play it you need a DVD player which allows you to reset the region an arbitary number of times (rarer) rather than a 'multi-region' one (more common).
Of course some Linux DVD players simply have a 'region' field in their config file which defeats this :)
Rich
This covers the subject pretty well, discussing the economics, sizes of markets, theoretical justification for region subdivisions, etc.
DVD Region Coding
Region coding is a perfect example of how the content production trusts abuse their special status. You see, our government, in its infinite corruptibility, has granted legal sanctity to the IP producer's content control systems. But the MPAA isn't just trying to use this new favor to prevent theft. They really see themselves as the natural owners of the whole transport layer and presentation medium, and they exploit it in any way possible - including with region coding, which (I suspect) allows them to sidestep the perils of free trade to further control prices.
What gets me is that I don't even see region codes as a big loss for the MPAA; I'm curious about the substance of the price differences across region boundaries that this allows them to create. I understand that the movie industry is in the habit of doing theatrical releases months apart on different continents, and that this allows them to make sure that the American DVD does reach Australia before the movie hits theaters, but really, how often is that in danger of happening? I suppose there are cases where they decide some time after a release in one country to go for a release in another (probably based on sales figures)... But how much hardship are we really talking about, I wonder?
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I think that's a U.S.-centric view of the situation. Region-free and region-selectable DVD players aren't that widespread in the U.S. simply because there's little incentive to do the mods here. We already get the widest selection of titles at the lowest prices. There are exceptions, of course, like Japanese anime lovers and film buffs looking for a certain, often uncut version of a film, but they're a small portion of the overall U.S. market.
The rest of the world is in a different boat. When you read about region-coding hacks, you are almost invariably reading about someone who wants to play Region 1 discs. This article is a case in point.
If you do a Google search for "region-free", most of the sites you find will be overseas. The retailers who sell region-free players and mods are everywhere but the U.S. When I ordered a mod board for my Pioneer, I ordered it from a European site and paid in Euros, even though the company shipped the product from an office in the U.S. Their major focus is Europe; they don't do much business here in the USA.
Having said that, I will be astonished if Hollywood really gives up on region-coding. They are the ultimate control freaks; it's hard to imagine they'll suddenly start selling what the customer wants instead of what Hollywood wants.
Europe have much less censorchip of movies than the US!
Nope. Europe has a very different censorship than the US.
We in Europe don't mind nudity or sexuality on screen - as long as it serves the story. (Porn is usually defined as nudity/sexuality without a plot. The French take this very literally - there are movies that show explicit sexual intercourse but that are not rated "porn" in France.)
However, our censors get all giddy-up with violent / numb action movies.
The US seems to be the other way round. Violence is ok, even in kid's movies, while a nipple can already be enough to qualify for an R rating. Eddie Murphy's "Boomerang" made a nice parody on this where an advertisement featured all sorts of atrocities, but a woman's breast was too much for the target audience...
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The head-butt was removed from Episode 2 because, according to the UK ratings board, was violence that was easily replicable by children.
They don't mind light sabers because kids can't replicate that and hurt each other. But a head butt could easily be imitated.