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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.
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.
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.
Archie - CIO-for-hire
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Movies often open in the US 6-9 months before they show in Europe.
Not true anymore. The delta between US and Europe has shrunk to a few weeks, thus reducing the need for DVD zoning. That's the reason.
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...
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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.
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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.
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
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.
...and some "overground" ones, too. One of the best places I've found to buy DVDs from is CD WOW!, http://www.cd-wow.co.uk/. Most DVDs there are less than £15, but can be any region (they tell you what region it is). They are also good in that you pay what you see: no VAT or postage to add on top.
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!
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.
To translate a film from American English to U.K English? What do they do, overdub "F*cking" with "bloddy" every time it's uttered?
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
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.
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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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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"?
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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.
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
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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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
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.
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?
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
Fine. They want to sell different versions in different countries, I don't
see a problem with that. But the lock that prevents cross-usage is still
no justified by a ratings difference. Sorry.
...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.
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."
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.
One reason is prints. Movie prints are mondo expensive to manufacture, so Hollywood studios may make enough for the opening in the US (a few thousand for a big release) and then ship them overseas, rather than making tens of thousands of prints for worldwide releases.
The revenue stream is another, since staggered releases provide the peak of a new release when business tails off in another market.
Local market variations may be a factor, too - school holidays are at different times in different countries, which is when studios like to have kids' films in the theatres.
It's fucking annoying, though, when you live outside the States, because it's all but impossible to avoid picking up more information than you wanted about things before they arrive here.
The irony is that the American publisher of the Harry Potter series, Scholastic Books, mainly publishes educational books. Yet they miss out on this genuine bit of medieval history in the most popular children's series of all time.
And the brethren went away edified.