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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.
I've never understood the reason behind region encoding. I know sometimes they release movies with different endings in Europe than they do in the US, and I would like to think I should be able to purchase a copy of the movie from there with the other ending (provided they don't already include in on the US version of the DVD.)
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
s/flaunting/flouting/
I can understand that people want to tailor their specific videos/software per region because of language barriers and such, so it'll be easier to track and distribute... But.. DVD is a medium that was MEANT to be an "all inclusive" format.. Meaning you can have Japanese, Spanish, whatever languages, subtitles, etc all on the same disc, or discs. Often in these region mixups, different people got to work on the movies and decided to add uncut footage that the other regions didn't get so it pissed everyone off .. Now everyone can be the same. Finally.
Someone came to the USA from the UK to buy a DVD!! How dare they support severl layers of economy like that!! The bastard!! Seriously, who gives a damn about where the DVD gets watched as long as they bought it. The manufacurers still get cash.
It always seemed like an idea destined to fail
No, i think it did its job spledidly. It prevented the general populace from spreading movies where they don't want, and it still does. How many people do you think buy a Gateway Computer, with DVD, tech support, ect., and don't know jack about Regional encoding. Trust me, they've done what they wanted to do, and it will still work, to a surprising degree, well into the future.
Just think how many people still can't program the time on a VCR. Do you seriously think they're going to find a go-around to Regional encoding when they're barely competent enough to wipe their own arse?
Region Encoding is a joke. In fact, about the only place these days which still "enforces" Region Coding is....the USA! The rest of the world treats it like the joke it is. You can walk into a Supermarket and a buy a DVD player which is advertised as Region Free in Europe.
The only people who pay any attention to Region Coding is the DVD-CCA. The player manufacturers couldn't give a crap; why do you think all these players have a "hiden" menu in them that can disable it? Ooops, someone accidently "leaked" the instructions on how to access it...oh dear...
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.
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.
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.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
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.
this will probably be modded as offtopic--which only makes my sig more ironic than usual...
---rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
The idea here was to keep people in regions where a film had not been released from getting the film ahead of time. Once again the MPAA has the kneejerk reaction of stopping the flow of things. Just like when the VCR came out...how to keep people from reprodicing movies.
I go to movies in the theater not because its the only place to see a film. I can wait for most films to be released on DVD before I truge off to the theater to stand in line and pay too much for popcorn. No I go to the theater to got the theater...to see Spiderman on a 36 YARD diagonal screen. Film is much more engrosing not having a pause button.
This is also obvious when you see how rare the MPAA rereleases great films. How many out there who own 2001 on DVD would pay to see it on the big screen. I'm sure we could come up with a list of hundreds of films they could put back out and have people flock to see them (think about how much better the summer would be if you knew there were going to be some good films that you could look forward to in addition to the list of ones you hope will be good like MIBII).
I think overall the real problem with the MPAA and the RIAA for that matter is they are in it for the money...not for the art. Yes the money may currently be in getting the 13-21 year olds into the seats, but if they tried to focus on the art rather than the product they might just be able to get the rest of us in there a little more often (and we'd still buy the DVD).
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
It would also go some ways to curb the film downloading from the net. For example us Brits can actually go and see a film that's being shown in the US rather than having to wait just under a year for it to come out and (for some) be tempted to download it in that time.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
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.
While I also made my Samsung 811 player region-free using a simple button sequenceon the remote control, I never quite understood why these codes were _there_ and so _easy_ to find.
Sure, DVD players are an international product and the region is selected after manufacturing a player.
But those in the business who actually wanted the region protection to succeed could have easily forced the manufacturers to make region-hacks more difficult. Manufacturers could have been forced to actually lock the region-code some way or the other.
E.g. the Pioneer 444 requires changing its firmware and it doesn't use firmware-upgrades through CDs as many of the Asian DVD players do, so making it region-free requires a lot more effort and cost. It's been hacked, as well, but it's pricy.
So all in all, it seems almost as if the DVD player manufacturers did not want the movie industry's plan to succeed...
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
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
If region encoding fails, it's going to hurt people in poorer countries far more than it will us. Although it still will, if you import movies.
Region encoding allows the studios to time the release of movies, sure. But it also allows them to sell the DVDs at different prices around the world. I just bought Der Herr der Ringe in Berlin for far less than I could in the US. People in Africa, Russia, and China get even better discounts.
So while the US is used to paying $20 for a new DVD, if the region system breaks down . . .
Everybody will have to pay the same equivalent amount of money. It probably won't affect the prices of Anime, though. A global economy, eh?
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I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
At least it's not as bad as some bad examples. (links stolen from ntk
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Why, yes, that IS quite a leap of logic, but stay focused for a few minutes while I explain.
A movie is released in the US, that is VERY controversial, but it's legal due to the 1st amendment. It's released through one of the bigger film companies, and they always stick with CSS, so they want to release it to Europe and Japan. But the governments of Germany, France, England and Japan have decided to outlaw the movie, because it's so controversial (think up a stupid reason, and it'll probably hold true), so the studio doesn't want to release it in Region 2 anyway, because it's simply not worth the effort with four of the largest countries and markets in the region outlawing it.
So now the rest of the countries where censureship is expressly forbidden (like Denmark) are now effectively under censureship - from other countries no less; all because some schmuck in Hollywood wants to rule the world.
Region Encoding is censureship and the powers that be knows it and loves it for that.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
If such a scheme had been introduced within the EU on such a device, such that say you couldn't play CDs purchased in France on a British CD player, this would be in breach of European trading laws.
Why can't this be the same in the case of DVDs across the world? Because Hollywood thinks it has the right to delay release of films in different countries, to the extent that some UK-produced films are released in the US first.
It's time to stop the media attempts at controlling the world, and start thinking around the problem - many people order DVDs direct from the US, but there aren't many companies that specialise in importing such DVDs and selling region-free players.
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
Sometimes region encoding is a useful tool. I've seen a couple posts elude to the fact that it's good for subtitles, but if you're not going to fill the dvd with a full length movie and other extraneous junk, region encoding can be very valuable. We've just started authoring dvd's here at the office and I've recently found out that I can set different parts of the dvd to different region codes. Basically what this means is that if we build content for spain and we encode it for the spaniards' region, so they only see the spanish content, and we can also have a sperately encoded section (completely different content) for the USA in all english. This also enables us to specify content for different cultures, cause some people aren't down with the american way of life. It's a money saver, let me tell you. Sure dvd's aren't that expensive, but when you get into mass production costs, it saves alot in the long run to be able to encode the data all on one dvd instead of seperate ones for english/spanish/blah blah blah.
Whatever man, I spelled it write!
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
Why not instead of region encoding they just stay with their current use of PAL encoding in the UK... i think its easier to break a region code than change to a different standard completely.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
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
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?
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
It looks like a spelling error or misunderstanding ,flaunting and flouting are pronounced differently. or at least where I come from they are.
flouting being like OUTing
and
flaunting being like haunting.
flaunting could even be the correct word if they mean 'wide-spread showing off and telling everyone that it can be done'
not
'wide-spread breaking of the rules'
I'm going with
flounting as a compromise between the two.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Circumventing and overpowering are, alas, illegal now. All we're left with is undermining.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
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
but what about the legal one?
In Switzerland, it's now illegal to distribute (as in selling, *not* copying) a movie without the explicit consent of the copyright holder for Switzerland. It seems we no longer have the right to choose what movie we want to see but we'll have to accept the small selection that are officially distributed here.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
They don't give any evidence of the forthcoming "collapse", they just consider it's getting closer but don't add much element.
Looks like hype to me even though the generalisation of the DVD-unlocks are a good but still unofficial.
Alsoi, since Aug 1st, it has become forbidden (in Swiss) to import Zone [^2] DVDs, so, I'd say that such collapse might be postponed.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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
Traditionally movies are released in summer in US and in fall/winter in Europe.
Maybe at the beginning there was some translation issues, but now that movies movies are released in english (at least in north europe) I think that's because now people are are accustomed to see major releases in winter (in particular in the pre Christmas period).
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.
I got my region-free, 110/220volt, NTSC/PAL/SECAM/everything DVD player from :
www.110220volts.comPlays my UK PAL DVD's on my NTSC TV with zero hassle.
The build quality isn't excellent but its not crap and for the money (about $120 as I recall) if it breaks I'll just buy another one.
For me at least, region coding is already over.
In reality, 2 reasons are cited in defense of region coding:
* fees for extras
* Censorship.
CSS cannot be a technical solution to a social problem: Its not the MPAA's job to control import/export regulations. If they only offer locally legal discs in every region they will succeed at 99.9% of the above. If some country want to prevent a more graphical version of a movie from entering their country then they will shutdown any massive importer. I really dont think these are very valid excuses for CSS.
The real reason is obvious: CSS is a tool for extracting the consumer surplus and nothing else
Those of you who haven't yet figured out just how evil hollywood is, absolutely have to read this !
Makes you wonder what this world is coming to !
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
The down side is that each theater must invest a small fortune in very expensive digital projection equipment. This is a big reason why there has not been much progress on converting to digital cinema; most theaters run on pretty slim margins. And, like any digital storage medium, some people fear that a switch to digital movies will ultimately lead to the loss of those movies as technology changes. Will future generations be able to read the data from a movie saved today?
I find this to be SOOOOOO funny! A US agency is technically in violation of the DMCA because they want to make sure that astronauts who bring DVDs aboard the space station can play them.
Region encoding and CSS encryption is ABSURD.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I'm into anime a bit, and there's a LOT of anime that just never makes it to the US because it wouldn't be profitable. Some of it is quite good, others make it over only to get hacked to pieces by americanization.
.hack). It is an excellent show in Japan that will be released in the US by Bandai, the main character has already been renamed from "Tsukasa" to "Kite". And Bandai has made an OVA, which from what I hear is nothing short of a train wreck. Now remember that this is a show that's already on TV in Japan. Not a theatrical release.
:)
One upcoming example is a show called ".hack//SIGN" (pronounced
An example of a show that will NEVER make it to the US is "Puni Puni Poemi". If you wanna know what it's about just use your favorite search engine. Due to various themes that range from sexual to silly it just doesn't fit into any of the main stream US "catagories". "People" want either pr0n or silliness. "They" don't want both. Personally I found the show to be downright hilarious. Even though I wouldn't show it to any kids
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Why dont I give you a link:clue;
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
A DVD will return the same mpeg stream reguardless of what region it is. It is up to other hardware to produce the NTSC or PAL or HDTV or etc etc etc.
:-)
Laserdiscs since they aren't digital had to encode the video format into the media. A NTSC LD will only produce a NTSC video signal.
The NTSC vs PAL thing was a stronger region locking mechanism than the current DVD region coding. To play an old NTSC LD on PAL equipment required buying an intermediate hardware (like a VCR that could produce either). With DVDs it often just requires messing with your old hardware to get access to the bits.
Such is the march of technology.
To flaunt means to exhibit ostentaiously. It's something Slashdot geeks might do with a hot new cell phone, or with their knowledge of grep syntax.
The correct word here would be flout, to scorn, to treat with contempuous disregard.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Hmmm, who the fsck would record a dvd to vhs anyways.
Parents of small children would, to avoid damaging their copy of "Adventures of Pinocchio" that the kids watch every night. Keep the purchased DVD copy as a backup and let the kids dest^H^H^H^Hwatch a copy on a $2 VHS tape. The Supreme Court has maintained that this is a fair use.
That is, until Congress enacted a bill that created 17 USC 1201, which gives publishers the right to outlaw fair use.
Will I retire or break 10K?
First, I think region codes are a bad idea (from the standpoint of the consumer), anything that prevents me from seeing, buying, enjoying something legal is bad.
With that said, the part of me with the 2 business degrees understands why the region codes exist: max profit. Make no mistake, every "good" (define that how you like) business decision was made to improve the bottom line, not for "art," "the cause," or what-have-you. As a result the region free DVD players are a godsend. But you might want to see if buying one in your area is illegal. If not: then get 2, they're cheap and small, and you can always use the backup ("cheap" means "cheap," people. Substandard parts used in exchange for the functionality you desire--it's a tradeoff....)
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
I know this has probaly been answered somewhere in here but where is a good place to look up cheat codes by make and model. I can sort of see the point of regional encoding for dvds that are available worldwide. But what about the ones only available in a certain region. For instance, the Family Guy Seson 1 dvd came out in the UK and only the UK. How am I supposed to get my Family Guy Fix when the US cancelled it and has no plans for making a Dvd??
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
Yes, but what region is space ? I would think it would be region 0 - aka region-free.
Special international venues such as air and space are region 8.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Audio cd's don't have region encoding, and the price of them hasn't stabilized, going between $12 US in Canada to $24 US in Japan.
Also, DVD manufacturers can probably get around people ordering DVD's from foreign countries by putting less/different features on the Russian/Chinese releases of DVD's (omitting directors commentaries, creating menus incomprehensible to English speakers.)
Even with a global economy there still can exist variety in pricing.
...legislation can't be far behind.
keep an eye out for legislation making encoding mandatory, and backdoors for devices that are designed to primarily play dvds illegal.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
But say they focused their advertising in America, spending N million dollars, and some guy from England buys a copy and has it shipped to him. The producers still get their money, just as if an American were buying the DVD and they can still reinvest this into marketing in the UK later.
Basically, even if they adopted a region by region advertising system, it doesn't hurt them if somebody in a region not-yet-advertisted-in buys the DVD. They get the money just the same, so your point still stands as to why they might spend their time marketing a DVD in various regions, but not why they would need a whole system to keep you from buying and playing DVDs from another region.
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
well, you got 2 kinds of people:
people who want to watch movies from different regions
peple who just want to watch what they pick up at the locoal dvd store.
The first group will figure out how to get around it, because there desire to figure it out motivates them. This is the group the mpaa wants to get money from for each region.
the second group could care less, therefor encoding doesn't apply to them, because they will never buy outside the region.
If the cost of encoding is more then any revenue it genertates, they will stop using it. At that point there will be a slew of firmware upgrades available.
It has been my experience that anybody who really needs there VCR programmed, somehow manages to get it programmed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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 ?
I believe most BBC DVD's are available in NTSC, Region 1, as the US has long been a great consumer of BBC properties, largely though PBS and some of the earlier cable programmers, like A&E.
the drive is responsible for enforcing this - it happens below the OS level
Well, thats just about as effective as CSS, a few bits that say "Please dont play this!".
They amount to be effectively identical, which is why they get lumped together. Also, the Key distribution of CSS *is* region specific, so its not possible to be region free and CSS'd, because not all dvd players have all decrytion keys, they only have the ones for their region. (This is more based upon the implementation rather than the algorithm of css)
Basically, the UK fox site had a DVD faq section where Homer answers the question "what is regional coding?" with "I have no idea whatsoever what regional coding means, but it is essential that you buy a multi-region player. Do it now."
Nowadays, Fox's UK Simpsons site, here, has Homer saying "I have no idea what regional coding means. But if you find out, let me know. Don't worry, I'll still be waiting here when you get back."
almost everything said here about price fixing, market delays and other reasons for region coding has already been said last year. I've collected most of it on my DeCSS page.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
The station has an international crew, NASA just wanted them to be able to see movies in their native languages if they wanted. Doing it Holywood's way would have meant shipping up 5 identical machines.
And some people are paying hundreds for region free players!
I just purchased my 2nd region-free DVD player last night. It cost me $230 with shipping from the Netherlands. Definitely more than the Apex you are mentioning, but I'll also be getting a lot of nice extras that make a difference for me (Component Video, DTS Decoding). Different strokes for different folks. :-)
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
More correctly ... the only place that region codes are not a joke is in Region 1. I am in Canada and they are not a joke here. Of course if you know where to look, (usually the malls in Asian communities) you can get the region free players very easily, as well as plenty of imported japanese notebook computers and 31337 GSM cell phones with colour screens and bluetooth. (Technically illegal imports, of course.) And oh, the manga ... /me drools
But seriously, I am ashambed to say that most people in Canada and the US don't know what DVD region encoding is because most movies appear here first.
not in germany and switzerland. it is illegal in those countries to sell dvds that are not encodeed with the proper region for its location.
The UK is crrently considering doing the same thing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
here's a concept: people move. i moved from the us to europe and i'm not alone. likewise people move from europe to america. what happens to our dvd collections? are we just supposed to buy our collection again? and if we are supposed to do that, what do we do with our old dvd's? i thought they didn't want people selling used cd's - they're ok with us selling our old dvd's?
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On the one hand this is good, because it forces people to realize that we are becoming a more global society. Release the movies to the whole world all at once! This would make the new digital movie format all the more attractive.
On the other hand, I suppose it's bad because it forces the world to be more global. That is, you can't have a different version of the movie in Japan than in Germany or the US. If the Germans don't like some scene in the film... well too bad, they get it anyway.
This globalization forces all cultures to merge. This is either good or bad, depending on how you look at it.
What gets me is that I don't even see region codes as a big loss for the MPAA
Worse, by imposing this constraint they have encouraged a truly vast number of normally ethical customers to align themselves with "pirates" and "crackers".
Region coding is very irritating - it's hard to convey to a general US audience just how annoying lame vendor tricks like the region change count in the Windows registry are. Cracks that fix this nonsense are a life-line, and now we've joined this jolly helpful community we're going to stay in touch.
Yeah... it was the difference between a 12 and 15 rating, I believe. Almighty $ comes into play again, except in pounds sterling. There was a headbutt in Lord of the Rings which was screened in the UK, but that was deemed to be less violent due to the non-human characters taking part
I'm a Russian, live in Spain and understand English pretty well. Forcing me to watch content in Spanish you aren't going to match my culture, neither my preferences. I prefer watching the original version. If it's in English then I want English subtitles too, otherwise it does't matter.
Most importantly, I don't want ANYBODY to decide what should I watch. It's not your damn business if I want to watch it in japanese, okay?
Many European peoples are more concerned by depictions of violence than of people naked (never mind having sex). Germany is probably the premier example of this.
Region Encoding is a joke. In fact, about the only place these days which still "enforces" Region Coding is....the USA! The rest of the world treats it like the joke it is.
The people in the US didn't see it as a problem with movies. But now there are lots of seriously annoyed Buffy/Angel/X-Files/Futurama/Enterprise/etc fans.
The player manufacturers couldn't give a crap; why do you think all these players have a "hiden" menu in them that can disable it?
It's cheaper for the manufacturers to make one model, which can have the appropriate code put in when it is tested on the assembly line just before it goes in the box.
Funny, actually. I usually hear it as: /RS - European
Many Americans are more concerned by depictions of naked people or sex than by violence.
Does "free trade" really mean "free trade as long as we can profit from it"?
Why, yes, yes it does.What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
en tee
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Sony, can't live with 'em, can't legally coat their executives with napalm and set 'em ablaze...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Except. People have already tried to set up such operations. Well, when I read about it, it was projection analog TVs and VCRs, which might or might not have succeeded financially. But they had no chance to find out -- they were soon confronted with studio lawyers, pointing at the "no public performance" fine print on the tape boxes.
Damn it, IP hoarding is a pain.