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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)."
If Blu-Ray doesn't match this, I think Toshiba just got a LOT more popular.
Although many people point to release dates and argue that regions were to prevent someone from importing a movie that was still in local theatres, I think a much larger factor was the general standard of living. Region coding allowed the studios to charge higher prices in regions that had higher standards of living without pricing themselves out of the market in economically depressed regions.
I know they were not popular, and also I know that there was an even bigger technical hurdle to watching them, because it is much easier today to hack a DVD player out of its zone control than it was to play PAL/SECAM tapes on American VCRs. At least most DVD players will take care of the PAL->NTSC conversion at no cost, while multi-standard VCRs or stand alone converters were pricey.
However, with DVDs and their optionnal subtitling capability, there was a huge opportunity to open the American market at very low cost, and apparently Hollywood has made sure it wouldn't happen.
Most DVD players in the Uk (especially the cheap ones) do not ship region free, but there is normally a very easy way (if you can find it) to make it region free. My DVD player can be made region free (or any other region) by using a hidden menu which is accessed by pressing 7 when the tray is open.
Lots of examples of how easy it is are available here http://www.dvdexploder.com/multihacks.htm
Avtar
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
The lack of Zone 1 DVDs from Europe is the result of the European distributors wanting to get licencing fees from U.S. distributers. It is possible to manufacture your DVDs as region 0 (all regions). The company I used to work for manufactured all it's DVDs that way, because they couldn't afford to create versions for each market. It doesn't cost a penny extra to make your DVD for all regions. And you can sell directly to the U.S. consumer via Amazon and Netflix who have no qualms about selling/renting obscure or foriegn titles.
But that is not how it works for the big guys. A European company will not release an all-region DVD (unless they are a small niche company), they will try to find someone to purchase the North American rights to the film, and manufacutre and market it for North America.
Why didn't you just buy a DVD player at the same time? A cheap one only costs as much as 2 or 3 DVDs, and more or less every DVD player for sale in the UK is either region-free, or can be made so after a couple of minutes search on google.
As far as I can tell from this discussion, this region coding crap is still enforced in the US. But it is certainly not enforced over here.
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.
hi
i live in a third world country
price around US$20 too
I hope that answers your question.
Get a Pioneer DV-470 (or 525 if you need SACD and WMA support). It can play DivX files too (and show your JPEG photos). And after that, get a firmware update from
l inks&catid=70&Itemid=4
http://mtz.softpedia.com/index.php?option=com_web
And you can do all that you want.
(The region-free part is actually in the standard firmware, you just need to activate it with some sort of IR signal (the guy who sold me one did it with a Palm Vx). But the Mtz firmware does all that and more, so just use it)
At least they have done it here (Finland) to some extent already, a recently passed law forbids selling/distributing DVDs that have been acquired from outside EU/ETA.
simpler solution, don't expect ANYTHING from sony hardware. many won't play CD-R or DVD+/-R despite being made wll after CDR was popular
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
So, you don't have multi-standard TVs in the US? Your DVD players don't do at least a half-arsed conversion from one standard to another? (What's the reverse of PAL-60? NTSC-50? So what if you lose 40-odd lines top and bottom?)
If that's the case: wow, what a backwards, insular country...
These things are pretty much standard in the rest of the world - any TV less than 10 years old is almost sure to natively handle PAL/SECAM & NTSC. And if you can't walk into a major retailer and buy a decent name-brand DVD player that's region-free out of the box (or with codes in the user manual), then you're not trying...
At least, that's the case in Australia. Hell, some of the major DVD retailers here stock R1 titles on the shelf alongside R4.
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
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.