Strictly economics. The studio wants to control the spread of the movie to maximize profit.
Movies often open in the US 6-9 months before they show in Europe. In many cases, the US DVD is out before the move has opened in Europe. With region codes they make it hard for Europeans to buy the DVD instead of going out to the theater.
The counter point to this is the fact that a lot of people want to see a movie on _The Big Screen_. Yeah, it's nice to have a movie that you can pop into a DVD player at home, but people want the experience of seeing the actors on screen, literally larger than life, and hearing the audio that was produced for the purpose of being heard in theatre. People love public events, and this isn't going to change.
Maybe I'm just too much of a lamer-gamer, but the world becomes more like ShadowRun every single day. Congrats, we have the beginnings of cyber-eyes right here.
And kinda like ShadowRun, I wonder if these things will be able to use alternate forms of vision (thermographic, for instance), or will accept vision magnification.
Just be careful that you don't lose too much essence...
Many anime shops are very localized, the only big one I can name is AnimeNation, and they're at www.animenation.com.
Eh, there's a few more.
www.rightstuf.com
www.dvdplanet.com (more than anime, but good selection)
www.dvdonanime (not a site to buy anime, but an excellent site for information, with many useful links)
Slashdot Mirror
This is way down the list, but maybe someone will see it.
I recommend Head Crash by Bruce Bethke and Wyrm by Mark Fabi. To my mind, they're not well known, but they're both interesting and humorous.
The links for the pages of the article are a little retarded. If you want to view a certain page number, enter the number after the last "/".
Just a little helpful advice.
I already see all of Slashdots news in the future!
...Wait...never mind. My system clock is running slow.
Strictly economics. The studio wants to control the spread of the movie to maximize profit.
Movies often open in the US 6-9 months before they show in Europe. In many cases, the US DVD is out before the move has opened in Europe. With region codes they make it hard for Europeans to buy the DVD instead of going out to the theater.
The counter point to this is the fact that a lot of people want to see a movie on _The Big Screen_. Yeah, it's nice to have a movie that you can pop into a DVD player at home, but people want the experience of seeing the actors on screen, literally larger than life, and hearing the audio that was produced for the purpose of being heard in theatre. People love public events, and this isn't going to change.
Maybe I'm just too much of a lamer-gamer, but the world becomes more like ShadowRun every single day. Congrats, we have the beginnings of cyber-eyes right here.
And kinda like ShadowRun, I wonder if these things will be able to use alternate forms of vision (thermographic, for instance), or will accept vision magnification.
Just be careful that you don't lose too much essence...
www.dvdonanime
Obviously, that should be www.animeondvd.com.
Many anime shops are very localized, the only big one I can name is AnimeNation, and they're at www.animenation.com.
Eh, there's a few more.
www.rightstuf.com
www.dvdplanet.com (more than anime, but good selection)
www.dvdonanime (not a site to buy anime, but an excellent site for information, with many useful links)