Interesting tidbit from the DVD wars

[trinityvixen]

Region encoding a thing of the past?

It's just a tiny sentence in yet another rehash about the Blu-ray versus HD DVD debacle. Really, you'd have thought they'd have figure this out by now. The sales for HD DVD, far as I've heard, are tepid at best. The Blu-Ray, being nearly twice as expensive, won't fare any better. By virtue of price, I could see HD DVD winning, especially as 90% of computers are running Windows and Microsoft has thrown itself behind HD DVD (not that it matters, really, what the hardware does versus the software, but are you telling me Microsoft won't "influence" that a bit? come on...). On the other hand, Blu-Ray's held sway in Japan for three years now, and it doesn't look to be going away.

What I find interesting is the idea of region encoding being done away with. This could not have been a better idea--it's the only good thing to come out of this stupid format war so far, though this article does say it's only the case to date (meaning they might change that, and soon). I know that people moving from region to region are relatively few in number, so one DVD-phile having to replace his or her collection isn't that huge or likely to make enough fuss to get attention drawn to this antiquated system, but I would hope they don't try to impose region encoding again. It's a pointless irritation that is circumvented by most saavy DVD buyers anyway with multiregion or region-less players. Just to make a few extra bucks when someone moves and needs to buy another copy of Citizen Kane? Come on.

Why'd they even come up with region encoding? I'm going to take a wild stab of a guess and say it was due to anti-piracy issues. Well, hello, you can get around that without even blinking, too. Sheesh. That's not even hard for a digital pirate to get around. Your average computer geek could do it in less time than it takes to program a VCR. Please.

Comments

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

The actual reason for it - the originally-stated reason - is because movies often don't enter theaters globally until they're already on video in the US, and they didn't want to worry about US videos harming global ticket sales.

Yeah, sounds like bullcrap to me, too. A few years ago I got my mom (in Italy) a region-free player so she could buy American discs without a problem.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's total crap, that's what it is. Stupid studios. I remember my film class talking about what took down the old Hollywood systems (money, or lack thereof, naturally), and I see it about to happen again. They'll hang themselves worrying about piracy, see if they don't. People are already turned off by those stupid ads in front of movies telling them not to illegally download films. It's a bad thing to broadcast the message that you assume all your customers are thieves.

[jlc.livejournal.com]

Regioning is a bigger problem than you'd think. It was a bitch for me when my family lived in the UK and I was still here. It's been a bitch when I want to import DVDs of French or Japanese films that I just can't get in Region 1.

And yes, it was an anti-piracy measure that was clearly not thought through. The idea was that if you only release Region 5 or something in areas likely to be subject to large amounts of piracy, the copies pirates make of legit copies will only be good in those regions. Regardless of the engineering merits of their techniques, the whole scheme is circumvented if someone manages to get a differently regioned copy across the region boundaries... which is oooooh soooo haaaard

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's terribly difficult to manage that. Not like I brought one with me into Australia when I was abroad or anything.

Really, this is like the stupid textbook publishers that charge an arm and a leg for things you can get for cheaper overseas. Technically, you're not supposed to be able to order them then, but I've used Amazon.co.uk to get a sizeable discount here and there, and I even had an order from the UK arrive no less than two months ahead of a US order placed at the same time.

And the stupid region-only bullshit to combat piracy is almost irrelevant in the global game. I really don't think there are even that many movies that do make it onto DVD or VHS before they hit overseas any more. Maybe there's a lag of a few months, but that's it. Even with the drastically shortened release period, there's not an overlap.

[(Anonymous)]

The regions only make sense in terms of Languages and formats. Even then, all Australian and NZ stuff being shafted into Zone 4 when all the British stuff that works on our systems is Zone 2, just to prevent import competition is stupid. That's without going into NTSC as Zone 1 which gives The US access to everything in Japan if it wants it.

The saviour of the Blu-Ray: PS3. Enough said.

[(Anonymous)]

Games are much worse here in Australia than movies are, because of the PAL formatting, we have to wait for it to be translated into every European Language before we get it. Sometimes this means a simultaneous release, other times it meas delays of several months. More often than not, it's several months.