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Blockbuster Chief: End DVD Region Codes
Xesdeeni writes "Blockbuster's President/COO Nigel Travis has called for the elimination of the DVD region code. At issue is the situation when a movie is released in one country several months before it is released in another. He points out that pirates 'can drive a cart and horses through these holes in the release schedule.'"
With global communication so simple and easy, this only makes sense.
I'm honestly suprised that when movie companies green-light a project, they don't have the script translated and the sub-titles / voice overs ready for final production.
Matrix III was the first to do this, hopefully not the last.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
I see a lot of folks are mentioning their "multi-region" DVD players, but how do I find one? Locally? Cheap? I've perused a few lists on the net, but is there a single, up-to-date repository of currently available Multi-Region capable DVD players anywhere?
Sorry for the bother..
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I worked for the company for quite some time and there was a little incident regarding FOX and BBV that I would like to retell.
Blockbuster pretty much has deals with all the movie companies (profit sharing, things like that) but for a time FOX had refused to sign on with BBV. At the time FOX was just about to release Lake Placid for the rental market BBV had orginally slated the title as a "Guarenteed in Stock" title that means there would have been a ton of this title in the stores for rental and FOX would have cashed in quite nicely.
BBV wanted FOX to sign on like the other companies so they dropped the title from guarenteed status and ended up getting one or two of this title in each store effectively screwing FOX out of millions of dollars in rental revinue.
Needless to say they signed on shortly after.
I could see BBV pulling this off if they play hardball.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
In Europe (or at least, in the Netherlands), most DVD players are sold with a region coding. Usually, it is not too difficult to remove it, but then the warranty is void. Furthermore, you have to pay a fee for having it removed. If you want to buy a region free player, you really have to search. Some el-cheapo players are region free, and some really expensive ones too.
der Joachim
Geek runner, motorcyclist and professional know-it-all
Just download DVD Region Free, it will let you play DVD's from any Region.
Blockbuster is owned by Viacom, which also owns Paramount.
I have a three year old Pioneer player that requires a chip modification to disable the region setting that costs nearly 100 GBP.
It seems that I'm in the rare minority with my player though.
The whole practice of region coding is restrictive and anti-competitive beyond belief. The entertainment industry seems to get a massively unfair level of protection from the US government on all levels.
Good luck to Blockbuster - even though they're trying to protect their own profits in areas outside the states - I hope they achieve what they want.
Even pirated movies in HK cost more than that. Believe it or not the price of movies are almost the same in Hong Kong as in US.
If you said "Pakistan" or "China" or "Thailand" or "India" that would be more in context.
Blockbuster is big enough that back in the mid 90's studios would preview movies for Blockbuster before releasing them in theatres to ensure that Blockbuster would be willing to carry the movie when it went to video. I don't know if they still do that, but they did for several years.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
DVD Region Free costs 40 bucks. Check out DVD Genie.
What country is this? Moldova and Byelorussia do not count as part of "Europe" as the rest of us understand it, really. I don't know what part of "Europe" you've been hanging out in, but this statement is just plain silly.
Since when does Ebay shut down auctions of DVDs? Doing a search for 'DVD' on ebay.com yields about 170,000 results.
Customs searches your bags for narcotics and guns and kiddy porn and such. Do you really believe they have that much free time?
Of course you can buy American DVDs in Europe. The same goes for American games nd American paperbacks--they just cost a bit more if bought retail, and your shipping charges are slightly higher if ordered.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
That conversation should have gone:
:)
me: do you sell multi-zone DVD players?
guy: no Sir, they're illegal in this country. (U.S.) but if you were to ask the manufacturer or look on the web, you'll find that you can switch region by pressing the open and 1 keys at the same time. wink. wink.
I doubt if anyone buys region-coded players in the UK anymore.
Actually, it is an offence to sell DVDs in the UK that are not BBFC rated, which effectively makes selling non-Region 2 DVDs illegal. You can import them yourself, though. I do it regularly.
buying a region free DVD player (which retail chains in the US do not sell)
Ya know, that's funny because the Magnavox DVD player I got last Christmas at BLOCKBUSTER will play DVDs from all regions. Sure, I have to punch a few buttons on the remote first, but it works just fine.
A lot of DVD players, name brand as well as the cheap Chinese imports will play DVDs from all regions if you know how - check the list of region free hacks at this site to see if your DVD player can.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
More troublingly, studios make special "Blockbuster" editions of a film for home video -- the tape or DVD you rent at Blockbuster of a given film might be missing material that shows up in the theatrical version or in a home video version seen elsewhere, with no indication on the packaging that this is the case.
I stopped renting at Blockbuster because of this.
--
Twoflower
Last Christmas I picked up a Magnavox DVD player at BlockBuster. I don't remember the model # off the top of my head, just that it ends with "SL". There is simple hack that temporarily sets it to region free, turning it off and back on restores it to normal. The hack can be found at the link I posted above http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdhacks
The DVD player also supports NTSC and PAL. In the setup screen choose Multisync and give it a few seconds for the video to stop rolling and it will let you play pretty much any disc you put in it. I've played CD-R KVCD, VCD and SVCD in both NTSC and PAL, as well as a non-USA region DVD (an anime disc from a friend, don't remember which one) and all have played with no problems.
It also will accept a CD-R full of JPG files and display them on the screen, which makes it easy to bore your family and friends with all your crappy vacation photos.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Actually Viacom recently put Blockbuster up for sale. So Blockbuster might not have the full weight of Viacom behind them.
J
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.
Where do I buy a DVD player that lets me skip the FBI warning and trailers? I would like to just play the movie I already paid for.
Supposedly region 8 is for Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)
And what is region 7 actually 'reserved' for?
Alot of this has to do with Blockbuster's "family" image. They will not rent out NC-17 movies (which is a real bummer, because there have been some excellent movies which happened to carry the NC-17 rating) or anything "too contraversial". Consequently, this is another reason why studios tend to fear NC-17 movies -- the home rental/sales market is lucrative enough for studios to bend to Blockbuster's will.
-Turkey
I doubt they do that now, if ever. They make a good ROI by selling overstocked (don't need 50 copies of Spider-Man a year after its release) used copies of the DVDs they rent. The renting "service" may be a hazy issue, but if the packaging on a purchased copy doesn't mention that it's been altered, it could be considered fraud. That's why pan-and-scan copies say "reformatted to fit your TV screen" on them.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's not a "benefit", but one thing that it allows companies to do is released different versions of movies in different countries. So it isn't just the same movie being released.
I know this because I live in the UK and I got burned buying the Indiana Jones boxed set. There's no warning on the discs that they are different from the "theatrical release" in the States. However, I put in the DVD for Temple of Doom and noticed that the name on the disc was something like "UK_CENSORED". I did a little poking around on line and found out that - because the original release of Temple of Doom was censored to satisfy the UK critics (in particular, they removed the scene where Mola Ram pulls the guy's heart out), Spielberg & co. decided to release that version in the UK, as it was the only version that UK audiences had seen.
Well, this pissed me off - in part because the cuts make mincemeat out of that section of the movie. Mola Ram is shown reaching to the guys chest, cut to Indy gasping, then you're shown Mola Ram holding a heart in the air, cut back to Indy saying "He's still alive!"... and we have no reason to know why we should be surprised by that.
I call Paramount in the US to see if I could exchange my R2 DVD for an R1 DVD (exercise in futility) and, after talking to a "customer service" rep for 1-2 minutes, got transferred to the special person that they keep in the back room for handing "difficult" customers. ;-)
So, that's a so-called "benefit" of region encoding.
Outside the US, where most consumers watch a mixture of domestic and US produced content, multi-region players are the norm. I think I read that all players in New Zealand are multi-region, and I know for a fact it would be hard to get one here in the UK that isn't.
So it's mainly a problem for Blockbuster: they can't rent out an out-of-region DVD even if 90% of consumers can watch it, because the other 10% will cause them so much trouble.
If Britain used NTSC, it might be in Region 1. Since it uses PAL, it gets shoved in with the other PAL countries.
Yes, I realize that there are TVs that accept both NTSC and PAL, but the standard for Britain is still PAL.
No kidding. Look here. I never by a player without checking dvdrhelp first.
"Region codes only prevent honest people from buying what they want..."
And/or from viewing what they own. I live in the UK, and have to jump through hoops to view the few R1 DVDs I own. (I only buy them when DVDs I want aren't released in R2 editions. This is usually for reasons related to the British film classification process, and the 'extras' that come with DVD special editions. If the distributor can't be bothered to get the 'extra' bits classified, they leave them off the UK DVD edition. So UK 'special editions' are less special than the US originals).
Fortunately, region-free DVD players are widely available in the UK, so this is becoming an ex-problem for us. But it is still irritatingly stupid.
That's interesting. Next time you're at Target or Best Buy, check out the Philips DVD 727, which is available for about $80. It's a nice progressive scan single disc player, which, incidentally, can be made region free by inputting a simple code using the remote control (widely available on the Internet).
It even converts PAL signals for display on NTSC televisions. Now I can get my Spooks fix without watching the heavily edited A&E version.
yes, but the latest region 1 DVDs will not work on multiregion DVD players unless you can manually set the player to a certain DVD. a automatic DVD player query the DVD for it's region and the new DVD's wont allow that, hence they wont play. so if you go for a multiregion player, go for one were you manually set the region before playing the disk.
more info here
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
There's a really cool trick I've seen, used by Internet retailers, where they have offices just outside the UK, and post region 1 DVDs from there. They accept payment in UKP, and your product arrives typically within 2 days. play.com, DC-DVD and a few others all do this.
Be careful; some of them only let you reset the region a finite number of times, and then it's stuck on whatever you landed on.
Some player manufacturers thought ahead, and provided means for at least those who know how to wield a soldering pencil to do something about region encoding.
One example I can think of is that of our player. It didn't take me long at all to find this page which describes, in disgustingly clear detail, how to make it region-switchable AND turn off that nasty Macrovision drenn.
Region encoding was a silly idea from the start. There's just too many ways around it.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
In a nutshell, Blockbuster tells studios that make movies with objectionable content (sex or anti-religious, mostly) "Make a 'family-friendly' cut of the film minus that content or we won't carry it at all"; they then carry this "rated" version which lacks the content from the original theatrical release, but they get to blame the director/studio if anyone notices. Some directors who have sufficient clout with their studios refuse, which is why you won't find some popular films there.
This should be common knowledge; try http://pintday.org/archive/20031007.shtml for a few links.
--
Twoflower
Actually, this was a pretty cool find. I guess you were right. Find out here who owns what...
Blockbuster renting DVD's is directly attributable to that format becoming the new "standard" for watching movies. Without them, it would still be VHS first, DVD second. Only this year have DVD's become more popular than VHS, in the US.
Blockbuster only rents DVDs because it became the new standard. Look at Blockbuster's 5 year stock rates. When DVDs hit, Blockbuster tanked, and they were the last major US rental chain to go to DVD in most areas, and they've only risen as they started moving to DVD and improving their rental prices to be more competetive.
Also note that the gross margin has jumped quite nicely since converting to a DVD driven rental business. Better product for the customer, at a slightly higher price, with better profits for the company.
Again, their rental prices (to consumers) have dropped, they moved to DVD after their business started shrinking, and it has shown a huge increase since they moved. Blockbuster was not ahead of the curve here, they just managed to survive.
Adoption of DVD was the fastest new technology adoption in US history. Many businesses were caught off-guard, and many of the movie companies, despite being the driving force behind the move, still haven't gotten a large percentage of their catalog over.
As for DVD region encoding, with several countries already removing it, it's only a matter of time before the US follows, and Blockbuster can only help with that by pointing out what is blatantly obvious to the rest of us. Perhaps Blockbuster sees a chance to regain more of the ground they lost 2-3 years ago (they were losing business before DVDs were released, especially in southern California where Hollywood Video moved in and really started undercutting them with a better selection and longer rentals), but I hope the other big rental outlets follow their lead on this. It may not be good for the movie industry in those places where they inflate prices and use the region code to artificially segment the market, but in the long run it's better for consumers.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I attended a lecutre where the CEO of Hollywood video stated that over half the revenue on the average movie was generated by rentals, and that blockbuster and Hollywood account for somethig like 90% of rentals. So, there's really no chance the MPAA will say "no DVD for you".
This is a good thing. The MPAA will hear this comment. Whether they listen...who knows.
The forced to watch preview is R.
:)
You sure about that? I know the MOVIE American Wedding was rated R, but the preview? Every preview I've ever seen actually has a little preamble "this preview is rated PG-13" or some such, to avoid precisely the controversy you describe. They basically show only the "kid-appropriate" (whatever that means) material in the preview. It's not like an R-rated movie is 90 minutes of solid sex scenes
Now, if your complaint is that you don't want PG-13 previews for R-rated movies on your PG-13 movies, that's a whole 'nother ball of wax.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
This has been around for ages. It's only present (so far at least) on R1 DVDs. Most auto-detecting region free players these days allow you to set the default region manually. My (UK) player defaults to R1 - therefore I never even notice if it's an RCE disc. If it ever appears on R2 discs, I can just manually change the default region with the remote.
Far be it from me to defend the DVD producers here, but it depends.. R1 DVDs only need to carry English audio,
I allways check to make sure that the movies I buy (canada, region one) have the French track included.
I prefer when they have English, French and Spanish, the 3 most spoken languages of the DVD region 1.
The producers will want the R1 disc out ASAP, following up with the R2/other regions as the translations are done.
They release movies in canadian theatres in French at the same time as the original english versions, there is NO reason to not include the track on the damn DVD.
You can't take the sky from me...
It's most definately the disc. On an NTSC disc the movie will either be encoded at 29.97fps or ~23.9fps at 720x480. On a PAL/SECAM disc it's 25fps at (I believe) 720x540.
The reason for the two different frame rates for NTSC is that the player can do some scan line magic to convert the ~24fps to 29.97fps but retain the better compression of dealing with progressive frames.
The short answer is that there is definately a difference in the discs
-matt
hey, i'm a manager at a blockbuster and i think your store must suck or something. my store is relatively new (about 7 months) and we have almost nothing but dvd's. They're slowly phasing vhs out all together. You're lucky if you can find vhs in my store. Our foreign section is nothing BUT dvd's. So, I think either your store is old, just sucks, or is a franchise store and not corporate.
see sig. see sig run. run sig run.
http://superdrive.cynikal.net/
Not only can you make it region-free, you can upgrade it to burn DVD-RW and DVD-RAM media, and burn CD and DVD-R at higher speeds.
Anyway, here in Mexico (Region 4) they sell DVD players in Blockbuster (and I'm sure elsewhere) that are region-less. That's because here--at least in Northern Mexico--we're close enough to the border that many people here buy DVDs on day-trips to U.S. border towns (Region 1) but when they rent them locally they are region 4. Obviously, you need to be able to use both.
This is a perfect example of how silly region encoding is. If it wasn't for the region-less players here in Mexico people wouldn't be buying DVDs when they visit the States. One could argue "Well, they'd be buying them in Mexico then." Not really. Most everyone with a U.S. visa tends to buy almost everything electronic in the U.S. because it's cheaper. CD players, car stereos, computers, etc. They buy everything up there. If they couldn't use the DVDs they buy in Texas in their DVD players in Mexico they probably just wouldn't buy the DVDs at all (since everything is rediculously priced in Mexico--another topic altogether). So the fact that Mexicans aren't subject to region-encoding (because region-less players are widely available) means even MORE sales for DVDs.
I'm glad someone "important" is finally saying what needs to be said. Region-encoding is counter-productive and doesn't do a thing to reduce piracy. It probably increases piracy and stifles legitimate commerce in DVD sales. And all this just so that the MPAA can control when their movies are released in certain areas of the world? Just goes to show how much they value CONTROL because it certainly never was a wise financial decision.
The other night we used my Wife's Windows laptop to watch a region 4 movie we rented here in Mexico. Windows told me "This is another region, you can only change regions 4 times. Are you sure you want to change it?" Clicked "No" and just watched it on my Linux machine instead. And people wonder why I don't use Windows anymore. :)