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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 ?
That's probably the collective HD-DVD camp's line of thinking. Then when the standard gain's mass-movement, region lock-in gets slipped back into the standard because of newly founded "concerns" from the content producers. All the pros (of course, aside from the very real cost-, and very arguable format structure- benefit)that the format has going for it suddenly disappear.
Let's hear it for marketing! Yay!
And now again for speculative opinion! Yay!
A B A C A B B
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.
RIAA Sues All Attendees of DVD Forum Conference 2005
Also, most of us can hack, and hacking DVD BIOS/software/players is pretty straightforward.
Jon, is that your work account? (see nick)
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