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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)."
Poor argument - it could easily be made (more) illegal, and hardware manufactures told not to add region-hacking codes in the firmware.
...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.
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 ?
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)
Who is this 'most of us'? Last time I checked only an extreme minority 'hacked' anything electronic.
Most of "us" just pretend "we" are hackers on /. whereas "we" are really clueless. We just run programs real hackers have written.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Or in the USA for $20 and in the UK for £20 ($38).
The problem is, a lot of people travel between regions, and when their DVD player wont play the DVDs they bought somewhere else, they complain to the drive manufacturer and the disk seller.
Its beginning to dawn on some people that slapping your customer round the face with a wet fish is not good business practice.
Have you explained region codes to your mother today?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
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?
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.
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
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.
I thought every residence is an individual "domain" under the new scheme.
Billions of region codes!