Slashdot Mirror
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.
The basic reason was to control release dates, and
to mollify countries like China who would like to
prevent people from seeing a lot of films. Censorship.
I'm not sure its an idea that was destined to fail,
but I'd sure be glad if it did.
They should ditch the macrovision crap too. It really sucks for those of us with cheap TVs, you can either watch it with that brilliant surround sound, but the picture wavers from crap to worse, or use a co-ax connector and lose all that great sound. Hmmm, who the fsck would record a dvd to vhs anyways.
Get a better TV you say??? I'd love too, but I am still working my way through college. Wanna donate a k-rad HDTV??? My email is at the top...
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
Added to that, there are multinational/multilengual people that wouldn't get the chance to see something from their homeland unless they bought _another_ player.
As an European, I can verify this. We have small "underground" shops which shell other-than-R2 DVDs, which cannot be found as R2, mostly because they're not released here officially yet. They also do modifications for some DVD-players that are not "crackable" thru remote control.
Unlike Europe, in the US most TV's aren't capable of displaying PAL AND NTSC signals, only NTSC. Unless DVD player manufacturers start shipping their players with PAL->NTSC converters, I don't see that the loss off regional encoding will make much difference. We still won't be able to watch imports from europe.
If you ignore the possibility that they won't fit in the available MB because of the extra 30 minutes of outakes and inane commentaries, then the original idea was that DVDs could be sold with multiple soundtracks & subtitles thus reducing costs.
In reality, 2 reasons are cited in defense of region coding:
* fees for extras (commentaries, FOX tv "making-of" specials) are often negotiated per region. It would cost the studios some effort and $ to get permission for all of the pieces in every market, so they make a European version without all that stuff [1]
* Censorship. Most European countries have their own version on the MPAA rating scheme. What's OK in the UK might not be in France, and vice versa. So there end up being a dozen different little cuts that have to be made to get the rating [2]
My personal feeling is it exists to maintain the old price differentials. DVDs are more expensive outside of the UK. Most of the studios have a European distributor who fiddles with the artwork, replaces the [R] rating with a (18) logo etc. If you could just use the region 1 disk, all of the "value" these people add wouldn't be needed anymore. The middleman would have to adapt - and we know that unfortunately people often try to use a technical fix to prop up their existing revenue model.
For a reverse example, the BBC usually region codes its TV shows. This is, I've heard, because it has a US distributor (Warner Home Video) who is supposed to get first refusal for all US releases - and they would feel threatened if people could just import what they wanted to watch when its released in the UK. So they mandate region coding. Not sure what would be in it for the BBC otherwise - its certainly a Hollywood studio thing.
[1] the smart reader will have figured out you can do this whether you region code the disk or not.
[2] once again the smart reader will be wondering how the hell this sort of granstanding by a few un-elected arbiters of taste is supposed to be beneficial in any way.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
The manufacturers give a damn, because they get more cash if they can time the releases with suitable promotional visits from the film's stars, etc. If the DVD is released into a global market, they can't stagger releases to allow them to concentrate on one market at a time. After all, there's only one Tom Cruise, and he can't be publicising his latest film in the USA, Europe and the Far East all at the same time. I personally don't think that maximizing an already huge amount of profit is sufficient reason for them to stomp all over my rights as a consumer, but that's their reasoning behind it.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
While I don't know for sure, I'd suspect it's to stretch out the revenue stream. They sell it in the US for half a year, then when sales slow because everyone who wants it has it, they release it elsewhere so they can keep raking in more money, as opposed to having it all come in basically in one chunk.
Another is the cost of making prints. Making and distributing prints of a movie is not a cheap process, and if you'd have to make separate prints for all the movie theathers - including small theaters that would only show the movie a couple of times, would be cost prohibitive. So they get around it by staggering the release and redistributing prints as and when the movie is taken off somewhere.
The latter may dramatically change with fully digital movies, when there's suddenly a lot of alternatives to cutting cost in the distribution...
Region coding is about movie industry control. There simply is no other way to put it. They can scream bloody murder about decss being used to make pirated copies of their movies, and at least that has some small infitesimal nugget of truth to it.
Region coding however, is not to prevent someone from using the product in an illegal manner, but to prevent someone from using a product in a legal, and more importantly PREFERED manner.
People in other regions would prefer to purchase a DVD at a cheaper rate, and they could, but the cost has been artificially set such that it can't compete with other regions. Movies show later in countries outside of the US and the industry doesn't want to lose money on the theatre sales if the movie is already available on DVD.
But unlike the descrambling issue, they can't scream bloody murder about piracy. Anyone and everyone that attempts to bypass region coding bought the movie. And if one DVD player comes out that is multiregion, once the price on it comes in line with other players, and it will, those other players will be unable to compete, especially in markets where the desire for a multi-region player is high. The other manufacturers WILL go multi-region as well, or they won't be able to compete. The DVD consortium won't like it, but they'll have to find a battlecry other than piracy to rally people to their cause.
Play with my webcams and lights here
it's not the ONLY feature they have. my $68 apex player from wal-mart will play any region dvd, any vcd, svcd, mp3 cd, kodak picture cd, audio cd, and even raw mpeg burned to a cdr! oh, and it's got component output and I've flashed the rom to be macro-vision free too! It really is a neat little peice of hardware, and perfect for tossing into a dorm room, because if someone breaks it it's relatively cheap to replace :-)
The real reason behind region encoding is not
..
to delay releases between different countries,
but to maximise income. Movies (and many other
kinds of intellectual property) sell at different
prices in different countries, due to differences
in purchasing power.
A particular movie might make the most money
when sold at $20 in the USA, but in Australia
$10 might be the best price point. However,
without region encoding there would be nothing
to stop someone in the USA importing and
re-selling movies from Australia. The end
result would be that prices would be roughly
the same in all countries.
So if you live in a rich country, region
encoding is a bad thing. But for citizens of
poorer countries, it means that they are
getting DVDs at cheaper prices than would
prevail under total 'free trade'.
So maybe the breakdown of region encoding
isn't as good for consumers as you might
first think
Wholesale import of non-RC2 DVDs is forbidden by law in Germany and, since 1 August 2002, in Switzerland. I don't know about other countries, but the outlook for the EU is not good.
I can still legally import RC1 DVDs from the US as a private person here in Switzerland, but this takes time and is rather expensive because of overseas shipping and customs expenses. Stores such as MediaMarkt used to have a good assortment of RC1 DVDs at reasonable prices, but this is now illegal. Since the primary reason to switch to DVD for me was the possibility to see a movie in English with English subtitles, I have practically stopped buying DVDs locally (the RC2 versions are often missing features from the US releases, and the English language audio track has permanent German subtitles).
Bottom line: Thanks to the industry's ridiculous policies, the money they get from me is down to about 1/3 of what it used to be. Maybe I'm the only one, but if not, they'll sure find a way to blame the slump in sales to "piracy" instead of acknowledging that they're shooting themselves in the foot.
And, by the way: How is this compatible with the "free trade" idea so cherished by many politicians today? Does "free trade" really mean "free trade as long as we can profit from it"?
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
Not true - For example, The Sum of All Fears STILL isn't out over here, it comes out in September last I heard. In the USA it has been out for months. 6-9 months is a little over the top, but we're certainly still waiting quite a while.
I've seen many films available for DVD release in America that are only recent cinema releases here.
They didn't. In the early days of DVD, the 'cheat codes' were always there because the DVD manufacturers knew it would put people off buying the disks. They only put the region coding in in the first place because it was mentioned in the license. The 'cheat codes' were a dodge around the license; the license presumably says that users shouldn't be able to turn the coding off, so they claim that the 'cheat codes' are maintenance access codes for callout engineers (which many appliances have), and aren't for users to use. But then there's no law restraining them from being distributed as long as the DVD company themselves didn't encourage it too blatantly.
This kind of thing isn't uncommon; the early portable MiniDesc recorders from Sony could have their 'one-generation-only' copy protection turned off by entering a code on the front panel buttons.
I don't think this is illegal even in the USA. In the UK and probably Europe it's directly plain; you can get multi-region DVD players in a supermarket (because they are cheap units from Asia which were region free in the first place), and there are commercial firms devoted to chipping players, which have gotten to seriously sophisticated levels now (change between regionless, auto adjusted locking, or locked to any region you choose; no macrovision; user prohibition override (ie, you can skip opening ads or studio screens); chip placed on a plug-in daughterboard so if the player breaks, you just pull the daughterboard then send it to Pioneer or whoever and there's no problem) and there's nothing illegal in it.
What really sucks is that as a student of the Italian language, I cannot get a copy of the Wizard of Oz in Italian. I can get a region 1 English/French/Spanish version because that's the makeup of the continent (note that Portuguese is missing). If I want a DVD in a foreign language, I HAVE to bypass region coding. And the manufacturers will not even provide me DVDs in another language that are legally region 1 coded. So I say screw them.
In which case, why is everybody so happily doing it, when the copyright holders could presumably wait a few years, and then take you all to court? No, I refuse to commit a crime to watch a movie that I would be paying the full price of. I will NOT purchase a DVD player or DVD discs until this is sorted out in a sensible fashion. My interpretation of U.K. law is that, in most cases, it expressly permits personal importing of copyrighted works. This should not be taken as legal advice, as I am not a lawyer, but I base that statement on this: http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_1988004 8_en_3.htm#mdiv22
However, I assume that devices to defeat regional encoding of DVDs are illegal.
I think that copyright law needs to be updated to address this specific issue.
Do copyright owners have the right to restrict importation to the U.K.?
Do I have the right to restrict export of something I own the copyright to from the U.K.? Or the import of something I own the copyright to to any country other than the U.K.?
These where radios that were only able to receive German radio-stations. No shortwave, no BBC nothing else.
Granted, this was for obvious political reasons (and there were cinema-"commercials" educating the people not to listen to foreign radio-stations), but the possibility is there, still today.
When will they limit the distribution of books ?
When will a German book-shop be raided because he sells a US-bestseller not yet translated into German ?
Think this is "impossible" ? Then think of Harry Potter and all the craze it created.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
The UK DVD of Star Wars Ep II will be missing the 26 frames of head-butt in the fight sequence between Jango Fett & Obi-Wan, for ratings reasons...
Likewise, the UK version of Disney's Lilo & Stitch has Lilo climbing into a cabinet with a pizza box lid for a door, while in the US version she climbs into a clothes drier. The UK ratings board had issues with that...
This sig intentionally left justified.
I found out about Sampo players thanks to a post in another story and I have to pass on the love...
I've used Apex players and frankly, they are trash. Spend a bit more and get an easily hacked player that has a lot more features and is a *lot* better built... a Sampo!
All the info you need is at Area 450
There is one particularly cool player they seem to like there that has a CF slot in it - and you can swap out that slot for a IDE hard drive if you'd like (to play back MPEGs, MP3s or JPEGS!) I didn't need that so I got the DVE661 for all of $160 pre-moded! (Gene Callahan rules! - see the pricing page on Area 450s site, he premod's players and sends them to you quite cheap!)
A|Q|U|A
Most people seem to think that a DVD is strictly a movie format like a VHS tape or an MPEG file. It is MUCH more than that, there is a full, albeit limited, language there, and you can do some interesting tricks with it. Warner tested a system where the dvd would load a program, check whatever region system it needed, and crash if it didn't get the response it wanted. It never checked the region in the official way, but it had the same effect. The program went something like this:
I am supposed to be region x
Try a region other than x
If it works, crash/display screen other than movie
Simple and effective. It didn't make it very far, so I guess there were compatibility issues. but if the system collapses, look for this, or worse schemes to resurface. Just because it makes you buy a new player every month to keep up isn't the studio's problem now is it? *You* are the 'thief' here.
-Charlie
There is always a way:
www.play.com free shipping in all European countries, and an absolutely fantastic selection of both R1 and R2 titles. And what's more important, since they are in Europe (Jersey Islands), you avoid the customs.
Then there is dvdboxoffice.com which also has free shipping, this one WORLDWIDE, but I suspect that larger shipments (4 or more DVDs in a package) might attract the custom's attention. Expecially since DVDboxoffice.com are based in Canada. I use them if play.com doesn't have the title I am looking for.
These two sites have been tried multiple times, never had one single complaint (and I have bought in excess of 200 titles).
Sigged!
It's that because RC1 discs come out first, and are cheap, and have the most features, then they get bought by people outside RC1.
Why is that bad?
Because it artificially inflates the RC1 sales figures, which makes RC1 look even more important to the distributors, which makes them focus on it and keep pumping the cheap, early, heavily featured discs into it, while screaming that they have to protect markets ("won't somebody think of the artists
Don't get me wrong, my UK based DVD player is pretty much set on region 1 (rather than 0, because of RCE) and most of my DVD collection is RC1, so I'm contributing to this. I'm just aware of it, and I hate that I'm helping to make it worse for everyone in future. :(
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I must, unfortunately, agree with the publishers that calling it "Sorcerer's Stone" would probably be better for an American audience. I had never managed to run into the term "philosopher's stone" before hearing the original title. If the book was not the first in the series, it probably would have been left untouched. But since it was the first in the series, people wouldn't immediately associate "Harry Potter" and "wizard." So by changing it to Sorcerer's Stone they ensured that people would know that it was about magic.
Since, obviously, us Yanks and our image-driven culture are definately going to notice the title first and ignore the cover art consisting of a boy and his various magic artifacts. Whatever.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Luckily, thanks to the Internet and most DVD player manufacturers, savvy UK customers can:
One thing that's interesting is that UK stores such as HMV, W.H Smith, Virgin etc. do not stock Region 1 disks in their UK outlets. No doubt it's because they would be released earlier, cost less, have better content. etc. etc.
BTW, I've never been charged VAT or import duty on any Region 1 DVDs I've bought online and had shipped to the UK - heck, I've just pre-ordered Monsters Inc. 2-disc set from Canada via DVD Soon at a silly price of something around 11 pounds (including postage) - any bets that will be retailing at 20-22 pounds in UK stores ?
They want to maximize profit by charging different prices in different markets.
He is absolutely correct! Have any of you seen the prices on Japanese DVD's? The prices are unbelievable. From $40-$80 for many films! While the Region 3 (Japan is region 2) versions released for Hong Kong and Korea can be bought for usually under $20 American. This was also the reason that the orginal Criterion DVD of THE SEVEN SAMURAI was pulled, because it had removable subtitles and was sugnificantly less expensive than the Japanese release. So it was pulled and given unremovable subtitles so it would be less enticing to those in Japan with all region players.
I have a multiregion DVD player by Sony. The Multiregion feature wasn't depicted in the box nor the manual but it was advertised as multiregion by the store.
It worked rigth out the box (no hidden menu nor remote control code), at least for region 1 and region 4 DVD's, I don't have DVD's from other regions to test it.(I live in Mexico)
16,777,216 comments ought to be enough for any forum!
Actually, you can get a considerable amount of Japan R2 stuff as Honh Kong R3. Check out www.pokerindustries.com. I managed to pick up "Battle Royale" there in R3 for $13. Woot!
The only reason I know anything about Philosopher's Stones is thanks to a computer game from Microprose called Darklands, which seemed to try to be as faithful to German history as possible. There was a whole alchemy portion of the game where you could mix potions using fairly authentic-sounding ingredients. Of course the game assumed that all the legends and stuff was all true. You also had to take down Robber-barons and other things of the region/period. You can find it for download on some abandonware sites, like maybe the-underdogs.org
Anyway, sure it's obscure, but there's no reason to change stuff like "Philosopher's Stone," especially if it has SOME basis in old legends. Maybe people would learn something! I like learning things...
-If
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!