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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.'"
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.
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
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.
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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.
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
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.
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!"); }
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.
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