Slashdot Mirror
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 honestly thought noone would stand for the DVD region system when it emerged... Hollywood have always previously had some technical excuse, but this time it was pure and simple profiteeering. Not that my DVD players aren't all Multi-region, but the principle of the thing.
...who doesn't have a region-free DVD player, or one capable of being set that way?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I don't think that it will go well with all the big bosses of the motion picture industry.
Primary because they see the region coding as a way to increase revenue.
Piracy can be dealt with another way (lawsuits)
So Blockbuster can buy movies in Hong Kong for $2/per and rent them in the U.S. for $4/night? Right, like the industry is going to listen to this guy.
The MPAA wants us to believe that region coding only existance is to allow them to release movies at different times in different parts of the world.
But why are old movies region encoded ?
Even DVDs of movies from the 60s and 70s are region coded !
The release schedule is the *only* reason I can see for region encoding. And since everyone and their dog can strip their DVD player of region restrictions, it's a useless 'feature' anyway.
Can somebody please enlighten me as to the benefits of region encoding? I simply cannot see how the movie industry makes more money by selling to certain people earlier.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
The better question is : What's in it for him?
Or How will eleminating Region Codes benefit Blockbuster? Remember he's doing this for the benefit of his business, not for Joe Geek's political agenda.
Why? Because say if I buy a non hollywood movie in another region. If it uses region coding, I can't play it at home. Say if a European buys BOTH their DVD player and some discs here and take it back with them. They can buy new discs that work in thier country. PAL/NTSC is not really a huge issue here. Region coding is stupid.
Gorkman
I was once told that regional coding also helps enforce countries' laws concerning what can be shown on film, etc. For example, censoring naked boobs or blood and guts violence. Not sure how true this is though.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
"There's no reason why a R1 and and R2 disc can't be released on the same day"
Far be it from me to defend the DVD producers here, but it depends.. R1 DVDs only need to carry English audio, subtitles and menus while R2 DVDs theoretically have to have English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and usually other languages. The producers will want the R1 disc out ASAP, following up with the R2/other regions as the translations are done. Sure, in some cases those translations will already be mostly complete (for the actual film/series anyway) and the DVD may not really need them, but that's the usual reason given for the delay between R1 and R2 releases. How true this is, I don't know - I'm not in the DVD business, thankfully.
Actually, you guys sometimes get them sooner. We are about a season behind in the Buffy the Vampire releases here in the states, because the FX channel currently holds the rights to air them.
The recording industry didn't take one _little_ thing into account - legislation in the countries that are supposed to be blocked from distribution by having different region codes.
So the whole region thing is not supported in some countries. I happen to live in one, a small country called Israel.
The outcome?
1. DVD Players legally sold in an already patched-to-RPC1 (region-free) state.
2. DVD Videotheques holding DVDs from just about every region code out there, 7 and 8 not excluded.
3. The few players that are sold in RPC2 state are sold with written instructions from the supplier on how to patch them to RPC1. In case you can't read, their help line will be happy to instruct you on how it's done.
4. Locally-licensed DVD's of hollywood films carry a region icon (which says region 2). A simple inspection with any ripping software confirms there is no encryption on the DVD.
I'll bet this is ignored by the law of most east-european countries, at least half west-european countries, and I don't even think I need to mention South America and the East.
And that's without mentioning the fact that any 6-year-old with a DVDR, CloneDVD and a certain 3rd party app I won't mention can reproduce a copyrighted DVD in less time than it takes me to write this comment.
So I fully agree with Mr. Blockbuster. The whole region idea was a bad idea which may or may not have initially set piracy back a bit, may or may not have returned the investment and saved a penny or two for the MPAA, and is nothing more than a complete nuisance today in most of the sane world. A little dialog box in CloneDVD or wherever saying "Reproducing this content is illegal in the United States. You are responsible for your actions. Press CANCEL to abort now or OK to continue" - like Roxio's CD Copier gives out for Audio CD's - would save everyone the time and hassle. Everyone INCLUDING the MPAA.
My 2 cents.
-
I live in Australia but come from the UK, so for Christmas I thought I'd buy my parents (back in England) a DVD. But Australia is in region 4, the UK is in region 2 and my parents don't have a multi-region player. The result was that I bought something else instead - I'm sure this happens a lot and can't quite understand how it improves movie studio revenues!
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
I and most of my friends don't really care much for localization of most DVDs. We studied English in school and as long as actors either speak English or have English subtitles we're fine.
At least when films are localized here in Sweden strange things happen, removed features and so on. So we usually make the extra effort to get the original release if it fills the criteria mentioned above.
Some films don't get released here in the UK for exactly that reason. If it doesn't sell well in the US, they won't bother spending all the time and money making other versions. See Wing Commander
As a retail store, I generally have more control over how the products change than any single consumer. When people complain about a product, I let the distributor or manufacturer know IMMEDIATELY. If I don't notice a change, I find other retail stores (competitors) and ask them if they're having similar issues, and if they are, ask them to complain as well.
Almost every complaint I've had in the past 6 months has been addressed pretty quick. But I would not complain if I didn't hear it from my customer base.
Blockbuster is doing the right thing in my opinion, but I doubt many of us here have complained to the retail stores about region encoding. Bitching and moaning at slashdot isn't a very good start. Tell Blockbuster (and Wal*Mart and Target and Borders and Tower) that you hate region encoding. Enough people complaining WILL make a difference!
I've even seen end customers bitch to the distributors and manufacturers to no avail, because most retail customers don't buy direct. I'm the customer of the distributor and they do listen.
I could never understand why some big company has'nt taken on this before - WTO rules say that you can not put artificial barriers when trading, yet DVD region codes are exactly that.
Its a bit silly also when 99%* of DVD drives can take a 4 digit code just to multiregion them up...
Paul
* in my experience... no data dudes.
This will never come to pass. There is simply too much money, marketing, and release management to allow this.
Only the largest of films, such as The Matrix or Lord of the Rings (or Spiderman 2) will have the ability to be released worldwide into the cinema.
Why is every movie released this way? Well, translations of course. And sometimes some editing, depending on the culture of where a film is being shown. For example, you may see some cuts in the US version that aren't in the british release or vice versa. Or singapore, just to pull one from the air.
The fact is that region coding allows films to be released faster and a universal region code would slow down this process considerably (just imagine the work for all of those extras to be released in their respective languages).
But perhaps that's too narrow. Let's just say we released the english version with no region codes. That's fine for huge films such as the blockbusters mentioned before, but what about smaller films, such as Jersey Girl, Kevin Smith's new picture which will come out in February but will definitely have a delay before it reaches places like Australia. Changes like this could ruin smaller films chances at box office success in other countries.
On the other side of the coin, 28 Days Later was on Region 2 DVD before it was available to be seen in US cinemas. And its good it wasn't a universal region code--the film opened to excellent and stable box office, something that would've never, ever happened if this ridiculous idea was embraced.
Doing additional dubs and subtitling takes time, making simultaneous release worldwide somewhat tricky,
So? In a free market, if the customer demands it, then you'd better figure out a way to do it.
Which, ironically, Hollywood has done. Most of the recent blockbusters did have simultaneous releases in the theaters, and there's no reason why the same can't be done for DVDs.
It ain't technical reasons. The movie studios have at times been very open with the real reason, which usually boil down to timing, i.e. "we can make more bucks if we release in X after their holiday season, and in Y just before that national celebration, and in Z half a year later since they're on the southern half and this is a summer movie".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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 quarterly filing.
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.
You mean like in the UK, where Sony stores will offer to pre-chip players for you and keep the warranty in tact. Even though they're affiliated to a film production operation?
Tiggs
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
- Trader A buys DVD in country X for $n
- Trader A sells DVD in country Y for $n+m
It's not quite that. It's more something like:
Buyer A gets DVD in Region X for $n
Buyer B cannot get DVD in Region Y until 3 months after region X release, at which point he buys it for $n (where it is already $n-$m in region X by this time)
As mentioned in another post, this makes it hell to buy somebody in another region a movie as a gift, and generally screws up a lot of internation trade in movies by anyone but monopolistic movie companies. If they want to enforce artificial scarcity, they should accept blame when I get a ripped DVD because I have no other choice
I hate region code so much that I will never buy a movie unless it's playable in all regions (Ya, you can find some of those movies in YesAsia. The region code itself does not stop a 15-year-old Joe from ripping the movie and share it by P2P, rather than that, it stops me from buying movies (no matter how good the movies are). Think about it, it is a nonsense idea that a book that I bought can only be read in some environment, not the other. So does movies.
I rented Bruce Almighty for the family to watch. It's rated PG 13. The forced to watch preview is R. (unskippable American Wedding preview) I don't let the kids watch R material. I call that feature User Unfriendly. We knew to preview the DVD and skip the sex scene for the 9 year old. Too bad they make you wait so long running past the preview instead of skipping it.
It shouldn't be standard pratice to load a DVD in the player 10 minutes before turning on the TV just so the previews are over. It's very User Unfriendly.
Sombody fix the FF button on those DVD's! 5 seconds in a preview is usualy enough to tell if the movie and preview are something I do or do not want to watch. Forcing an unwanted age inapropiate offensive preview is as welcome as a goatse.cx link in a technical discussion. The previews should not be rated worse than the feature. R, X and XXX previews should not be on G, PG or PG-13 features. Thank goodness the worst I have seen so far is R previews on PG-13 films. But like the seven words you can't say on TV, I don't expect them to keep to the curent high but dropping standards.
That alone has kept me from buying several DVD's I have rented.
Also ditch the crazy attempts at copy protection. I rented Legaly Blonde 2. The FBI warning got stuck in an endless loop on both a standalone DVD player (Classic brand) and a computer.
Anybody else experiance this?
I returned the defective DVD for exchange. I was told 8 others were returned the same day for the same problem and an exchange would not fix the problem. Copy protection is lost revenue. I got a refund as I couldn't view it. It also caused extra overhead for Hollywood Video the handle the consumer complaints. Third, there is no way I would consider buying it later because I already know all copies are broken. I also suspect anything else by the same studio may be plagued by the same ailment so I avoid that studio's work, just as I avoid CD's by those dabbing in audio copy protection. It might work, It might not, but once opened, it's almost impossible to return. Why bother?
A look on the good side is several of the DVD's I have bought lately list right on the cover they are all region! This is limited to old TV programs so far and not movies, but hopefully that day will get here. The down side is due to the music copyright issues the original theme songs are removed. Bummer! A new generation may view these classics and never know about the original theme songs. I guess they don't want people to enjoy the music as it was intended. There are some people out there that do want to sell DVD's and have taken steps to make them user friendly. They even took steps to keep the price reasonable by not paying inflated ASCAP prices so the DVD is reasonably priced. Too bad a reasonable price could not be reached with the music copyright holder to include the theme songs.
FYI the altered DVD's are The Beverly Hillbillies and The Andy Griffith Show.
The truth shall set you free!
The interesting thing about this is that when I was in Sweden visiting a friend, I brought a stack of US DVD Movies (region 1, NTSC) and his DVD player played it without issue and even converted the NTSC to PAL signal before outputting to the TV. This wasn't something he bought or modded to do specifically. Just a stock DVD player that his parents got without a clue. What's funny is that movies are normally released in the US (big budget) before going overseas months later, so release scheduling wouldn't work. But, this could be an isolated incident.
Blockbuster's weight is significant regardless of Viacom ownership; they're the only North American wide rental chain.
Remember Divx players? The ones that would essentially force you to buy a disc at a modest cost and then purchase codes to unlock the disc for single viewing, multiple days, or forever? This was the competing format against standard DVDs for about 5 minutes.
Blockbuster/Paramount/Viacom was a MAJOR advocate of them; I considered (and may still consider) it to be the most regressive form of copy protection this side of a Microsoft product.
And now Blockbuster is essentially saying "Copy protection doesn't work; get rid of it."
Good on 'em. It's about time major industry started focusing on what matters - last time I checked the movie business was supposed to make movies, not walls.
People will pay for good content: maybe the economics of the industry are skewed by the Hollywood cartel and need adjustment, but people will pay.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
"You don't like our region codes? Fine--noDVDforyou." And that's all she wrote for Blockbuster.
Sure, cut off a major portion of your income out of spite and watch otherwise profitable movies become money losers. I'm sure the MPAA will do that.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Region codes are not a problem -- I have two DVD Players (cost $50 each). One is set for region 1 and one is set for region 2. Region codes were a problem when the DVD players were expensive.
Even when players were expensive region coding was never a real problem (at least in the UK). Companies in the UK have been selling modified players since DVD players first came out over here, and if I remember right some were selling modified US players before DVD was even launched over here. At least they did sell modified players - seeing as you can pick up a multi-region DVD player (without even needing to enter a 'code' much less soldering a chip into it) for under 30 quid these days I doubt there's much call for modding players anymore.
Tk
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
It really comes down to this: If Return of the King is released next week on DVD here in US, then mr. and mrs. X in Germany will know about it. This is how open societies work.
If they know about it, then they will want it too. There are three ways around that. Either have a region-free/region-adaptable DVD player - or - a total US setup - or - get a pirated DVD. It is not so much a matter of money rather than conveniency that makes the third option viable.
In other words: there is a demand which is intentionally left open to exploit. I think the movie industry is whining over their own stupidity.
Just think of the prohibition. Just how much criminality did that stupid piece of law induce. Sigh...
Ain't it the same way there in the States?
A few years ago in my home town, there was a big spurt. A BB and a Video Works and a Video Replay and a Rogers Video ALL opened up in the same small suburb. The Video Works and Video Replay were even in the same shoping center. And they all went out of business within a few months, and manged to take the local store in the area out as well, so now everybody on the north end of town has a 15 minute drive to the BB in the central region (Which also drove another local store out of business. Not by being cheaper, because they were more expensive, or by offering better selection, because they didn't, but because there wasn't the demand to sustain that many damn stores, and they had deeper pockets)
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
"The extra time on windows created by regional coding is an opportunity that pirates exploit." (A quote by Blockbuster Inc. president and chief operating officer Nigel Travis.)
I firmly believe this is (yet) another example of how anti-piracy measures do nothing to stop pirates, while doing everything to inconvenience legitimate consumers. Region coding accomplishes the following:
- Legitimate consumers cannot buy a DVD in one region, for example, during a vacation there, and view it back home in another region.
- Legitimate consumers cannot buy a movie over the Internet from somewhere in another region.
- Legitimate consumers in one region may entirely lose access to material released in another region if whoever releases it there doesn't bother to release it worldwide.
- Legitimate consumers in one country may have to wait months upon months to see a movie that was already released in another country.
- Pirates take advantage of all of the above to make a profit by mass-copying movies illegally.
So what's the reason for this stupid idea in the first place? I can't figure it out... I think it was just a stupid idea that couldn't possibly work, but was put into effect by corporate executives who do not understand the piracy problem, do not understand what consumers want (or could potentially want if offered), and merely panicked from the possibility of having less control than in the days when different regions had their movies in incompatible formats.This is no longer the 1800's, this is almost the year 2004. Movie execs: Wake up!
There's a theory that Hollywood has pushed for the DVD coding to stifle the competition by preventing most of the American public from getting access to European movies.
Without DVD coding the US consumer would realize how crapy are most of the Hollywood products, and that's bad for business.
That explains also the fact that it is very difficult to find multi-zone or dezoned players in North America (zone 1). Elsewhere, they are very common because there is no action to really prevent their sale.
British Anime fans, and British "don't like long waits and/or BBFC certification" fans. That's who.
OK. We're lucky. We actually have something resembling decent Anime DVD choice here these days. But there's a lot of stuff that simply isn't around here. We import. Either the R1 DVDs, or the R4 DVDs.
Plus, whether Anime or not, UK releases are normally several months behind the US. And also you simply can't trust anything to not have BBFC-releated cuts.
TiggsTiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."