Interesting tidbit from the DVD wars
Jul. 3rd, 2006 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenRegion 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.
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.
