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No Region Codes for HD-DVD?
MBCook writes "According to Engadget something interesting has come out of the DVD Forum Conference 2005 in Japan. Here is the line from the post we've all been waiting for: 'But one statement from Toshiba Digital Media Networks' Hisashi Yamada was particularly intriguing: "We've gotten a variety of opinions about region controls. Even in the Steering Committee, they are extremely unpopular; we decided to not put them in. HD DVD probably won't contain any region playback controls."' Source: Japanese, English (via Google's Language Tools)."
Sure we have region codes now with standard DVD but it's easy to find a region-free player and discs.
Also, most of us can hack, and hacking DVD BIOS/software/players is pretty straightforward.
Thanks.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
If Blu-Ray doesn't match this, I think Toshiba just got a LOT more popular.
Does this mean we can import and play the HD-DVDs of movies that have yet to come out in the theatre here in Europe? (without special hardware)
I wonder what the movie industry thinks about this.
probably not
As in, I meant to say "not", but as always I'm leaving open a wee bit of maneuvring space just in case the roof suddenly comes down next week.
Cool !
at least one copy can be made to an electronic format, and no region encoding? sweet!!!
I hope Apple jumps on this because then they could have all they need for a video iPod
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Japanese English?
-DB-
E-mail is like a prison: a prison with no walls... and no toilet. -Strong Bad
It's too bad HD-DVD is technically inferior to Blu-Ray. This just might make me side with HD-DVD eventually. I'm still holding out hope for one standard. Not a whole lot, but I can dream, right?
Brain kills internet cells.
DVDs code you!
Looks like the competition between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD may benefit consumers in the end after all. Now let's see what Sony offers the consumer with Blu-Ray to convince us to go with them first.
One of the reasons I choose to back up my movies onto DVD+R is that I do not have to wait for what on many brands are endless previews. It's bad enough to have to pay 20+ dollars for mostly shit movies but to then be subjected to 10 minutes or more of commercials and previews that are sometimes not easily skipped is ridiculous. Add to that some of the more ridiculous menu systems on some movies and it can take what seems like an eternity sometimes just to simply pop a movie in to fall asleep to. They have 2 sided capability, how about simply playing the freaking movie on on side while saving all of the fancy menu bullshit for side-B. If I cannot make it easy by just copying the movie alone to a playable format I simply wont bother with most movies.
...is that they're not supplying region code "functionality" because region codes definitely have increased piracy as a whole. When someone in a given country can't get a DVD because its not available in their market yet, they'll more likely just download the movie.
Region coding worked fine before information traveled so fast and so easily. You'll also see European release dates much closer to the U.S. release dates for the same reason -- if the movie isn't in theatres in your market, just download a bootleg and see it first.
Here again is another proof that information not only wants to be free, it wants to be available to everyone at the same time.
... after all it seems to me that most movies these days are released close to the same time all over the world now, instead of being spaced apart in different regions. There is just less need for the studios to try to implement this control any longer.
Didn't it used to be that a feature release movie in N. America took about 4-6 months before being released in Europe? The idea of region coding was that the movie could be in theatres in Europe, while already released to DVD in the U.S.
Of course, leaving the region coding off this new format could also be due to the fact that (as I understand it) the majority of DVD players outside of N. America just ignore the region code anyways.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
In my opinion the average end user won't want to wait 45+ minutes, (being conservative), to rip and encode an entire DVD. I'm assuming Apple would use one of their new HD codecs to encode anything from a DVD from an ipod, and as I remember those take forever to encode into even a web usable format.
If you're watching something on an ipod screen, or especially keeping a movie on your ipod and watching it on your desktop/laptop, quality is going to be a very big issue.
The only thing that's not going to matter as much is all the sound information, but that doesn't take up very much space on the DVD, anyway.
I don't think a video ipod is practical right now.
"Lead my skeptic sight."
I've always found it interesting how region coding was giving an advantage to Hollywood movies. Everything out of Hollywood, even the least interesting tripe, gets released in other region codes than north America, notably in the Europe/Japan zone (2). On the other hand, only a relatively few movies from Europe and Japan get an "American release" on Zone 1 DVDs. Hence the zoning works as a one-way filter and keeps American consumers from most foreign movies.
The theater release date argument toward zoning is not good because more and more of the most anticipated movies have worldwide release, and also because then why would zoning apply to old classics and other pre-dvd era movies that are still to be released ?
And the people rejoiced.
And the movie industry rejected HD-DVD.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
DRM is even more unpopular but it's being used even more.
Region codes may seem ridiculous and bothersome to the consumer, but it prevents us from ordering movies and games from less well off places where they're sold for maybe $2 instead of paying $10-$20 here. Unless the studios are willing to release material with a global price of 20 US dollars it's not going to happen. Or maybe they'll just change the name, it won't be called "region codes" by name but there will be something in place to restrict the playing of foreign movies and games. There's just too much money involved to scrap it.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Obviously, it could just be a case of HDDVD seeing how unpopular they are and making some changes to their strategy late in the day to get some support which they wouldn't have done if we hadn't originally shunned them.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Region codes are important. Yes, they are important in combatting piracy worldwide and creating a satisfactory and convenient consumer market. he DVD Region Coding system is part of the DVD specification. It was added towards the end of the development of DVD at the request of the major Hollywood studios. In essence, Region coding is designed to prevent a disc purchased in one Region of the world playing on a player purchased in another Region. This was done so as to allow the movie studios to have geographic control over the release of their movies on this new-fangled digital format.
DVD players that play discs regardless of their Region Coding have made a mockery of the Region Coding system. So too has the dramatic growth of the Internet. It is just as easy to purchase a DVD from the USA as it is to drive down to the local bricks-and-mortar DVD retailer.
A new, improved Region Coding system has been developed to combat this widespread disregard of the current system. However, as we will see, few DVD player owners will have much to fear from this new system, despite the scaremongering of the movie studios and some less-than-scrupulous retailers.
Towards the end of 2000, what appeared to be internal memos from both Columbia Tristar Home Video USA and Warner Home Video USA were made public on the Internet. You can read the full text of the memos here. These memos indicated that a new form of Regional Coding was to be incorporated into future DVD pressings. The information was phrased in a suitably vague manner, so as to suggest that most multi-zoned DVD players could not play these DVDs at all, which is far from the reality.
In reality, the new Regional Code Enhancement scheme is severely limited in its functionality by the fundamental way in which DVD players work.
Click here or here.
Most of us are capable of hacking to some extent, whether it be via hardware add-ons or reverse engineering software.
If there are bits, 0s and 1s, if there is data, basically if it is electronic, we can hack it.
Just like with all forms of audio/music Digital Rights Management (DRM), if I can hear it etc. you can't stop me from copying it.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
what, blue-laser disks aren't serialized that way?!
y'know, there's nothing that says that DVDs need to be region coded. It's in the current spec, but there's plenty of content released without region coding.
;)
The original reason for the region coding spec wsa ato allow controlled release of theatrical materials in multiple regions, according to the content prodcers' specification. There was also a secondary thought to piracy prevention.
I honestly don't think having region coding in the spec is a bad thing - I thin kthe legal and regulatory framework that's surrounding it is flawed. I also think that using or foregoing region coding is a good indicator of who's on the side of the angels
Region coding is not important. It's what allows US retailers to sell a DVD for $20, while their counterparts in the 3rd world sell them for $2 (legitimately, I might add). Of course, a substantial profit is made in both cases - but they maximize their profits with coding.
Why doesn't the industry care about coding new DVD standards? Because the region coding system used by "old fashion" DVD technology is not going away! All HD DVDs will be high priced regardless of region. Low-quality DVDs will still be the norm in the third world - with coding. In the USA, HD DVD will be the only option retailers will sell.
This isn't eliminating region coding. This is making it stronger by creating a "DVD stratification".
- Classic DVDs, available for a buck or two, will still be region coded. All DVD players supporting legacy DVDs will still have region coding. High priced HD DVDs will be region free. So what.
- HD DVDs, available for $30+, will be the only option made available by US retailers.
so if information wants to be free, that means your social security # and credit card # want to be free, so go ahead and post em on a web site, and/or don't complain when a cracker breaches some random companies database and gets your SS # and CC #, cause, you know, information only wants to be free!
What I want in a DVD player (or any movie player):
I managed to get a DVD player that can do the first two (it also does PAL->NTSC conversion), but not the last (and I actually have an old TV with only coax input, so I must run the DVD (at the time, the DVD only had RCA analog out) through a VHS player which doesn't work due to Macrovision; I've been bitten and I wasn't even trying to copy... luckily I also have an old VHS player that doesn't have auto-tracking, woohoo).
I absolutely abhor shopping for these things because it's such an effort to do the research and find something that works how I want it to. It's tough being a discerning shopper. Is there a DVD player that can skip "non-skippable" things? Can I do this from Linux (in which case, is there a DVD drive that is region free? I assume Macrovision isn't an issue... even if I were to record analog with a VHS deck...).
So, yay to no region codes, but to the current DVD player shopping: AAAAAAAAAAAH!! #%$@!
I think broadband internet and region-free players have made both region coding and staggered releases less desirable. I'm really hoping that the movie industry sees the light, because while staggered releases used to make sense (I didn't say good for the customer, I said made sense):
1) The "big selling season" for movies has been spreading across the calendar - it may be that we're heading toward a year-round market. (Obviously there are movies all year, but the big summer and winter seasons are no longer as exclusive as they were.
2) Broadband internet allows people to get pirated movies even more easily than the dreaded bootleg DVD - and faster.
3) As if the dreaded bootleg DVD wasn't bad enough, since the DVD standard was established the market has generated region-free players (several years ago) which are now so widespread that frequently "late" movie market viewers can obtain "early" market legit DVDs before the movie hits the theaters.
Region coding is a zombie. Zombies can be hard to kill, however. (How many people are running pirated copies of software that they OWN because they can skip the registration/copy protection schemes?)
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
I know that our committee actually doesn't decide about that, but as I said above: let's make it look like we actually care.
I like raking in that million bucks in my account. I know you don't, but who cares?
We found a hack-proof way to put region-codes into the player without putting codes into the format. Just wait...
Any the moon probably isn't made of cheese.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Hello county codes!
I think this says a lot about the intelligence of the people creating todays DVDs.
Region codes was a bad idea to start off with. There are a lot of DVDs released that get region coding that will never ever be released for the remaining regions, thus cutting themselfs out of a huge market. All DVDs produced here in sweden inevitably get a region 2 coding, although they will never be released outside of europe. This means that I can never buy any of these DVDs for my friends in the US, even though they put english subtitles on them.
And honestly, in the cases where a DVD is released in the US first and then in europe, the majority of the EU market will wait for the EU release. First of all so that they can hold and feel the DVD in the store before buying it, second to get the proper subtitles and other EU specific content. Sales in stores is still vastly bigger then sales online, especially if you have to pay for delivery across an ocean and then deal with customs.
And it seems like the DVD producers have realized this since they are asking for regions to be removed for HDDVD. However, they are not smart enough to stop using region codes on normal DVDs! They still keep shooting themselfs in the foot just because they are given a gun.
MORONS!
Failing to learn from history dooms you to repeat it.
So stock up before they are made illegal.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
Toshiba might well make HD-DVD region free, but don't expect Sony and Co to do the same with Blu-Ray. Sony will never implement a totally region free video format. I think even the UMD discs have region encoding.
I was rooting for Blu-Ray, on the simple basis of higher technical standards. But now HD-DVD is offering me a lot more choice, and most likely lower cost imports. I've just been converted to the HD-DVD camp and all it took was one press release.
See Sony. Consumers like it when you don't cripple their hardware with restrictions.
May the Maths Be with you!
RIAA Sues All Attendees of DVD Forum Conference 2005
Information doesn't want to be free as in beer. It wants to be free as in unconstrained. That's what the expression means. Once it's out there, it just keeps moving. You can't tie it down.
I was in London last year for a couple of weeks and stumbled into a Virgin store or some mega-chain thing whatever it was. Anyway, lo-and-behold I stumbled on a gold mine of BBC classics on DVD, from Sci Fi to John Clease on Monty Python and Fawlty Towers and various other shows I was interested in. I was jazzed I picked up a basket and started shopping, I was ready to plunk down a huge chunk of change when I realized, oops..they won't play.
I was so dissapointed. What a bummer. What good did this do anyone? The store lost out, I lost out, the manufacturer lost out.
Yes, I can find many of those same DVDs locally here, but you have to understand being in London in a store that had nothing but these great classics , all together, all in front of me, all ready to buy. Ouch, still hurts to think about it.
In my humble oppinion, simple is better. Remove region codes; that's one less thing to worry about. Have a thicker surface; that means less scratches. Don't require an Internet connection; I can play DVD's in my car. Don't kill my DVD player; I won't have to call tech support. Don't require a full Java interpreter; my DVD player won't get a virus or worm or other malware that is now inside my local network.
While Blu-Ray has a little bit more capacity, I think that's the only thing it's got going for it. HD-DVD appears a lot more down to earth and a lot less prone to problems. It's got my vote.
they can remove the region coding ... and invent some kind of technology that won't allow imported discs to play on your player and name it something else.
anyway what's the big deal with multi region players? I'm from Argentina. DVD makers here make their DVDs region 1 and 4, because of the many people who bought their DVD players on Miami or somewhere else. But what about the americans? Maybe the biggest audience, I don't think Joe Sixpack gives a shit about playing "euro movies", maybe like 1% (with 1% of error margin) of the population cares about playing imported movies (that is, people who like foreign movies and anime fans).
We have two competing formats, Bluray and HD-DVD, both of which may soon be Betamaxed by HVD (Holographic Versatile Disc). HVD disks should be able to hold one or more TB of data, which amounts to a lot of DivX movies. HVD has backing from many companies including Mitsubishi and Fujifilm.
I think this highlights a real danger in investing in new technologies. Suddenly some new company comes along with something 10 times better and you stand to lose billions.
I'm in the middle of moving with my family from Europe to the United States. Besides the fact that things with electrical outlets won't work as everybody knows -- the very idea that I can't view my purchased movies I bought in this European country to play on my DVD player in the United States is absolutely ludicrous. It's not in a different "voltage", it's just a simple friggin' MPEG-file on a piece of plastic!
Worse is that if I would ask around where to make my American DVD player region free they wouldn't help me due to the DMCA.
Region codes were flawed from the start: It's not the discs that should be region locked, it ought be the DVD player. And it's not the DVD player that you should have changeable regions, it ought be the discs. We'd still have regions just like the movie companies want us to have -- but at least we'd be able to move from one continent to another and still use our completely legitimately purchased wares.
But alas, since this is impossible due to obvious technological limitations, we ended up with this half-assed excuse we have today.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
All the features are going to be the result of centralized planning, comrade. This politburo knows what we need, better than weknow. And these people and companies are called "capitalists?" I have to laugh at the irony.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I am sure the marketers and their executve buddies will see to it that region encoding will be shoved down our throads like the DVD format.We'll get someone like DVD Jon to take care of this executive marketing bulls**t.
If you want full access, don't buy prerecorded discs. Shoot your own video, edit it together, and burn it to a disc. But then you might run into some post-production problems where you can't find any royalty-free music to use.
It doesn't cost a penny extra to make your DVD for all regions.
Yes it does. The copyright owners of musical works and sound recordings that are licensed to be included in a movie will typically offer a significantly cheaper buyout rate for a single-territory release than for a worldwide release.
At least most DVD players will take care of the PAL->NTSC conversion at no cost
Here, "most" isn't "virtually all", so if you want to import all-region DVDs, make sure to read reviews before buying a DVD player. My $60 Apex AD-1200 (NTSC region 1) plays Wobbl and Bob vol. 1 (all region PAL) just fine by converting the picture to NTSC mode, but my $150 Sony PS2 (NTSC U/C) just gives "TV system doesn't match."
The real evil is UOP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_operation_prohi bition). It is truly amazing that it is even legal. IMHO the people behind that technology should spend one second in prison for every second they have wasted other peoples time by refusing them to skip parts of the dvd, change audio/subtitle during the movie etc.
The software companies had different motivations at first because of the way they released movies over time. It made sense to insist on region controls. Today the software companies are moving toward symultanious release across the world and digital distribution. Region controls make less sense today.
Of course, none of this made any difference to the high volume "pirates" who just copied stuff that was popular with zero difficulty.
woohoo! I hope blu-ray does the same.
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
I suspect that the reason for omitting region controls is actually a legal one. With current DVDs and games, it is often necessary to circumvent copy protection to circumvent region controls. Courts are more likely to call circumvention of region controls "fair use", and this provides legimitacy to programs and devices which circumvent their protections.
By removing region controls, they can say to the courts (and the lawmakers) - "look, if you circumvent our protection, you must be a pirate!". Right now, all it would take is a a rule from the Librarian of Congress to provide an exemption for cracking those protection schemes to make it legal. This is _far_ more likely to happen for regions than for backup copies.
Being a person that travels reguarly between North America, Europe and occasionally Africa, i can attest to you that DVD region codes have always been entirely pointless. The two main reasons region codes were implemented was A) to control movie/dvd release timings in various parts of the world and B) to prevent people from purchasing cheaper versions of DVDs from foreign countries.
In actuality, neither of the above two have actually occured for the following reasons:
The majority of the people that complain about region codes are (excluding those guys that love their asian porn and japanimation) people that travel and move between different continents. Anyone that does falls into either of these groups, already has a DVD player that ignores region codes...thus making them pointless.
People who just can't wait to watch a movie that has come out in another part of the world will find a way to watch it regardless....generally by downloading a movie off some p2p network.
The above to points together make argument A entirely moot.
Arguement B is entirely disproven by a combination of factors as well. The following facts are true: Many people do not have faith in the internet and thus are very sceptical about ordering stuff online...much less from a website in asia/south-east asia where dollars signs are replayed by little Y's with lines through them. Americans are lazy, they'd rather buy DVDs at walmart at the same time they get their size 60, Route 66 pants. If a person doesn't want to pay 15 dollars for a DVD, there are much easier alternatives than ordering Moulin Rouge (Mombay Edition) over the internet; you can walk (i mean drive...forgot this was america) to your cities local china town where 'buy 3 DVDs get 10' offers appear on every corner. Generally, no one is going to order dvd's from foreign countries.
Im greatly looking forward to HD-DVDs not having region locking. as for blu-ray....its gonna end up like every other piece of sony technology (Mini discs, magic gate memory, UMD, etc) -> proprietary and dead.
I actually have an old TV with only coax input
Most electronics stores sell RF modulators that turn any composite NTSC video signal into an RF signal on channel 3 or 4 and, unlike VCRs, never get confused by Macrovision gain control BS. (U.S. law mandates only that VCRs in record mode get confused by gain tricks.)
Could the region coding not be included a different way, maybe as part of the encryption. If each drive requires a key to decrypt the disc content, players for certain regions could contain certain keys while other areas contain different keys. Just from a quick glance at the AACS specifications http://www.aacsla.com/specifications/specification s.htm/ it does seem there would be ways to restrict playback to specific regions.
This means that I can never buy [Swedish] DVDs for my friends in the US, even though they put english subtitles on them.
Notice the words "colour", "lorry", and the like in the subtitle track. Those are words in English, the language of England. They don't speak English in the USA; instead they speak American.
(Separate reply for separate issue.)
And it seems like the DVD producers have realized this since they are asking for regions to be removed for HDDVD. However, they are not smart enough to stop using region codes on normal DVDs!
Actually there's a good reason. Music licensing contracts for current films often specify a territory because the DVD format allows enforcement of such contracts. This entices the music publishers and record labels to offer less expensive licenses for single-territory use than for worldwide use. The movie industry wants to back out of those contracts, and a format that isn't capable of enforcing territorial licenses of underlying works would be a good tool to use against those major record labels that aren't affiliated with a movie studio. (Sony BMG is with Sony MGM, but the other three major labels aren't now that Vivendi sold Universal Studios to NBC and Time Warner spun off WMG.)
They still keep shooting themselfs in the foot just because they are given a gun.
It's that the studios want to point the gun at UMG, WMG, and EMI instead.
I can equally proclaim that information has its own conciousness and will fight against whoever tries to DRM-it.
buy a wavetable synth
Who owns exclusive rights in the waves in the wavetable synth's memory?
by creating all the components of the music on your own PC you avoid any licensing issues.
I wish that were the case, but what is the best way to defend against allegations of infringement through subconscious copying?
I disagree with this. What it is, is an informal attempt to hypothesize a natural law of information escapology.
Two things that immediately occur to mind:
For DVDs, hacking is actually more widespread and accepted than in most other areas. Even in your average electronics supermarket, you could find offers of making DVDs region free, just as getting a stand to your tv or cables to the dvd. At least that has been the case the last few years here in Sweden. I think the companies have recognized that, the people willing to go through the trouble importing discs, wouldn't mind the minor hassle of breaking the region coding. What they have proposed though, could be used to implement a much stronger protection for them. By requiring an online validation system they actually can stop a disc bought in one country to be used in another country. So they do not have region codes as we know them now, but in effect keep the market segmentation in place, with a much stronger system.
This is just the nail in HD-DVD's coffin. The studios are now going to flock straight to Blu-Ray with this announcement. Sucks but true.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Who owns exclusive rights in the waves in the wavetable synth's memory?
doesn't matter i said to create your own patch sets specifically to avoid issues of wave data ownership, though it is likely that the data which comes on a synth would be licensed for royalty free use in final productions because the manufacturer wants people to buy and use their product
the other issue is just an asinine abuse of copyright law, hire a hit man to off the tosser who accuses you.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
" I was in London last year for a couple of weeks and stumbled into a Virgin store ..."
:)
Good lord, man! I didn't think they existed anymore, let alone that you could BUY them!
England certainly is a different place, indeed.
No way I'm signing my name to this one!
** Spoiler Warning for The Ring **
I was just watching The Ring yesterday, and it occured to me that these days, if the MIAA got their wish, everybody would be dead, because nobody would be able to make a copy of the tape. In fact, the whole film wouldn't even work if the MIAA hat their say, because the audience would be going Make a copy? But nobody can do that! And it's illegal!
Of course it might get rid of the MIAA altogether, because to hear them speak, they are the only people around who don't make copies. So, send a DVD of the cursed Ring video to your local MIAA member, wait seven days, and all this DRM will be taken care of in no time. Evolution in action.
You know, that little girl is just obviously misunderstood.
Now that Mod Chips Are Legal who really cares about region codes? just wait for the DVD player mod chip!
----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
Major movies like the Matrix have made a big point of doing world-wide releases. Region coding was a bad idea, the consumers lose and the studios don't actually gain much of anything for it. Maybe it stopped a few people from ordering cheap DVD's from abroad. But really, those people who would would also be the people who knew how to bypass the coding anyway.
It solved a problem that didn't really exsist and probably actually ended up costing the studios in lost revenue for potential niche markets.
Quack, quack.
Its beginning to dawn on some people that slapping your customer round the face with a wet fish is not good business practice.
Let me guess... you hang out quite a bit on IRC?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
HD-DVD! Thank you, thank you.
Next story please...
Ocean is land, covered with water.
I have a pioneer DV-470. Be careful if your DivX videos aren't set to "DivX Home theater" resolution, some of my anime fansubs (NON-licensed of course, so they're legal) have the subtitles clipped at the bottom of the screen, so the DV-470 becomes practically useless for this purpose. Bummer.
Every disc would essentially have a serial number and theyd scan your card and scan the serial on the disc like when you buy a product service plan or an expensive piece of hardware. DVD's R and up require ID anyway and movies R rating are a lot less likely to be pirated. So you can the dvd, scan the id, scan the serial barcode, and you're done. The store would then be responsible for uploading the serial number to a central tracking server marking it as sold (or returned, etc).
Sorry, but if they start requiring ids for purchases then they've lost me as well as many other buyers. As it is now in some stores I will only pay with cash and never with check or credit card, and I no longer buy anything from MGM liquor stores because even if you use cash they still want your id and will enter it into their computer. I value my privacy and don't want ANYONE tracking me! This is one reason I only buy movies, I don't rent what so ever. Once I checked about renting from someplace and was told I needed to fill out this application that asked for a bunch of credit info they had no need for, it seemed as though I was applying for a loan or credit. That application quickly found it's way into a circular file.
FalconShould there be a Law?
That may be so, but most of the population struggle even with the documented features of their device, nevermind applying cracks to them.
I'd say most people don't even RTFM.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The vast majority of DVD players sold around the world these days are region-free, including from major DVD Forum members like Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba (on other continents). It's really only the US that's still clinging to this concept, because the Hollywood studios want it and US consumers generally aren't affected too much by it (unless you are, like me, a fan of foreign films and music). But even here, I can walk down to my corner deli and buy a region-free player for $50. So really, the only people who put up with region controls right now are the people that want to.
Count me, in being a fan of foreign (and art as well as independent) movies and music that is. I've got a bunch, well maybe a dozen, foreign movies on tape, and a couple of them on dvd. Actually my fav theatre, Landmark Theaters, shows quite a few. They're showing one now, "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, I'd like to go see.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Great news for the consumer, but I wonder if the film studios will be prepared to release their lineup on HD-DVD now?
i wonder how they're going to cope with the different video formats?
even if you've not got Region-formatting (however great that would be), one still has to get around the NTSC / PAL divide somehow... granted most TVs can cope with both, but what if they simply made the hardware only able to cope with one instead?
now that WOULD be a pain.
See Sony. Consumers like it when you don't cripple their hardware with restrictions.
nope. consumers like you like 'press releases' with spurious claims, not the product
A zillion PS3 equiped with blueray DVD drives, and everybody will jump on the blueray train....
Step 1: Super cheap ($36.99) DVD player from Target (Cyberhome DVD-320): Check.r home+CH-DVD+300
link
Step 2: Region-Free hack (takes 1 minute, you do it with your remote): Check.
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.php?select=Cybe
Step 3: enjoy your region-free dvd player.
> if such a system has been proposed or patented, i'd be interested in reading more about it.
0 so originality isn't a requirement at the office of Patenting The Obvious.
Here's how it worked back then.
- to run a protected program, you had to start it with the "key floppy" in the A: drive *WITH WRITE-PROTECT TURNED OFF*
- most of the key floppy was writable, just like an ordinary floppy
- small portions of the key floppy were *NOT* writable
- on startup, the program would read certain sectors of the floppy, write to them, and read them again
- if the writable sectors had changed *AND THE NON-WRITABLE SECTORS HAD NOT CHANGED*, only then would the main program launch. Which sectors were writable and which were non-writable was presumably encrypted in the startup code.
You could make a bit-for-bit-identical copy of the key floppy, but the copy would be a regular floppy. The "non-writable" sectors would be written to, and the data changed, alerting the program that it wasn't using a genuine key floppy, and it would refuse to start.
So it's not really a new idea. But what the F, go for a patent anyways. Microsoft recently got a patent for re-inventing sudo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/20/22123
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
To even casually analyze your comment, however, it's obvious to any educated person that grammatical and spelling errors increase the "noise" in any attempt at communication (the content being the "signal", if you're not following). Someone posting could, in fact, have a brilliant, insightful idea or comment, but even a few errors make it more difficult and time-consuming to read and understand. In extreme cases (which, alas, I've seen all too often), an intended point is completely lost in a miasma of misspellings and poor construction. The point of my concluding statement, which you seem to be wilfully ignoring, was simply this. Taking the extra 2/100ths of a second to type a word correctly can have a dramatic effect upon others' perception of one's intelligence level and/or credibility.