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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"
Blockbuster is owned by Viacom, which also owns Paramount.
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
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.
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.