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DVD Zoning Challenged by UK Supermarket Chain 256

Posted by michael from the no-borders dept.
maroberts writes, "Britain's larget supermarket chain, Tesco, called on Warner Home Video to abandon zoning which inflates UK DVD prices, reports The Independent. Apparently sales of Tesco's stock DVD player [Wharefdale DVD-750] skyrocketed after the UK's hi-fi press explained how to make the unit region-free. " Looks like the UK is tired of overpaying for movies.
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DVD Zoning Challenged by UK Supermarket Chain More

DVD Zoning Challenged by UK Supermarket Chain

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  • Region Free DVD Players in the US (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Check out the Apex DVD player. Its the same one which plays MP3s. The engineers left a hidden menu on the player. It has the ability to select any region and to turn off macrovision (so it can be recorded to VHS). The player is not the highest quality (I had to open mine up and replug some cables to get the remote to work). Its based around an IDE DVD-ROM drive which means it can also play from CD-R and CD-RW media. All in all this is a very sweet unit for Nerd-Out [nerd-out.com]

  • Good point! Region scheme == OPEC. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And it's my understanding that collaborative price fixing organizations like OPEC are illegal in the US, the UK, etc. Why should the MPAA/DVD consortium not be ruled an "illegal collaborative price fixing organization" with regard to region coding. Then we could just dump regions and start producing all players as region free players. Region coding would go the way of the 'bozo bit'. (You Macintosh people know what I mean hby this).

  • Tired of overpaying... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    [Original story]: Looks like the UK is tired of overpaying for movies.

    Hmm... In fact, the UK is tired of overpaying for everything - current buzzword in the media is "Rip-off Britian", referring to overpricing of just about anything the press can find that costs more than Europe, US, or anywhere else.

    Personally, I think the media is overplaying it, but it probably needs to be overplayed, because it does happen in certain markets, and it really is pretty bad.
    The markets where it happens are mostly those where relatively few companies control the market, such as automobiles and groceries. I guess DVDs fall neatly into that category as well.

    In the case of vehicles, people are finding that it's cheaper to go to europe, buy a British-made car over there, and have it shipped back here, than it is to buy the same car from a showroom just down the road from the factory.
    So with cars at least, people have found a way around it, and the industry is being forced (reluctantly) to react.

    In the case of DVDs, the zoning is there for the singular reason to prevent that kind of consumer action. This is surely wrong. In a true free-market economy, product prices are driven down by consumers; With zoning, this can't easily happen. Therefore zoning is an attempt by a small group of companies to maintain artificial price levels; surely this qualifies as a cartel?

    --
    Spudley strikes again!

  • Re:It *is* about piracy... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > It *is* about piracy...

    If you define piracy to mean going out, buying a legal copy of a movie, and playing it.

  • "Piracy?!?" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Piracy is where you attack defenseless people, rape them and take all their valuables at gunpoint. Buying a video from a foreign source and viewing it before the studios hardly sounds like piracy, more like working around the idiocy of the studios distribution system. Why should somebody in the UK have to wait 6 months after a movie is released in the US to view it? It's not like they're going to fly to New York, go to a movie theater, then fly home. And it's not like they have to dub the movie in Commonwealth English instead of American "English". By the way, I'm from the US, and I still don't understand the reasons for the foreign distribution delays.
  • It's all about image, at least here in the US. Every stupid piece of (major) legislation is given a nickname like the "Victim Rights" bill or whatever. Who's going to be against the rights of victims? Likewise, who's going to be for piracy? When someone types /nick President_Clinton in IRC, they aren't a simple prankter, but an eveil hacker out to wreak havoc on all of cnn.com. Republications put out a national budget, Democrats rave that it will descroy the entire universe (1995 and the "school lunch" fiasco), they add two dollars here, subtract two dollars there, and voila they have a similar budget that adverts major catastrophe. Every computer/Internet related news piece uses "hacker" and "your credit card number" in the same sentence.

    Every little thing is given such a label so that the general (uneducated) public will be instantly on their side when they see the piece on the local news. In that one little phrase, the majority of the public is agreeing with them. What can we do? Well, just keep preaching the good word. You'll be labelled many things yourselves, but with perseverence we shall prevail...
  • Why would it be illegal for you to play this hypothetical (or not) DVD? At any rate, region codes have absolutely no effect on piracy -- if a pirate wants to sell bootlegs of an already-existing disc, they can set the region code on the copies to whatever they damn well please. Of course, that's not where the money is. The market wants bootlegs of movies for which no legal disc exists, and this is exactly what pirates provide.
  • I'm really glad to see a corporate entity with somewhat of a soul.

    Actually, I suspect Tesco's concern is with the region-encoding disabled, people will buy DVDs cheaper from overseas sources and not from Tesco's. Tescos can't price-match because they pay a higher base price for their region 2 discs. Still, the enemy of my enemy...
  • One thing that has me hesitating on buying a DVD player is those horrible "can't fast-forward through" bits on some discs, usually the FBI warning, but apparently the most egregious being Disney's "Tarzan" which forces you to watch the ads each time. Does this player also get around that abomination?
  • I don't think the studios really believe it stops piracy, but they can't very well say that it allows them to gouge consumers in other countries, now, can they?

  • Finland Finland Finland the country where I want to be e e e.

    Vermifax
  • Well... my apex dvd just arrived today. can't wait to set it up tonight.

    anywho, check circuit city's website and you may be able to order one even if you can't in the retail stores.
  • >> Except that some (most?) region 2/3/4/5/6
    >> transfers are done quick-and-dirty

    I've got news for you, region 1 discs are done quick and dirty (and released cheap), region 2 discs are done to much higher standards, better MPEG encoding and with more extras - partly to justify the higher cost.

    Compare US and UK releases of the same material, check the image quality and MPEG artifacts...

    Tim
  • No you'll be the one in jail awaiting your right to a speedy trial on murder charges. If you get cleared on those charges you'll be working your buns off to pay off the attorneys defending you on the wrongul death suit in civil court. After you lose and are fined a couple of million you'll be lying on the ground in the street because you just lost your home and all your worldly posessions.

    All because you chose to kill somebody instead of giving them your wallet.

    Not in Oregon he wouldn't. Not in a lot of States. The right to keep and bear arms is specifically a self-defense right in the Constitutions of much of the American West.

    We had a guy in Oregon recently who was fleeing the police, going from house to house looking for hostages, who was forced to drop his weapon by a housewife with a pistol, and on going to the next house, was shot with a .22 rifle by a 12-year-old boy babysitting his younger brother.

    Fighting back works. Use a knife if you don't have a gun, use your hands if you have to... but with a gun, it doesn't matter if your attacker is bigger, faster, or has less to lose.

  • Can anyone give a rational reason why DVD should be any different to these other media?

    Three words: Because They Can. Just like making you watch the FBI warning (OK its a bit annoying), but to make you watch the previews??? I would consider that a defective disk and return it. Oops, off on a rant again.

    I think we are just seeing the downside of the new technology. VCRs started out with very little in the way of digital circuitry. Remember the VCRs (or even TVs for that matter) that had tuner knobs? Technology improved and now VCRs and TVs have no moving parts for channel selection apart from up/down buttons. As processing power gets cheaper it allows more things like DIVX, CSS, whatever. VCRs had measures to make copying difficult, but with better technology, these measures have become more sophisticated.

  • Its about time! The zoning they put into DVD players is just another over reach of their power. It allows them to create the prices for dvd players and the media....

    Just because they came up with this simple system doesnt mean that they should make billions off of consumers...

  • Geez, read what you moderate next time --- mark it as funny, but this is NOT for real, you are going to mislead people.

    Kellner continued, popping open a bottle of Champaign and proceeding to roll around in a pile of thousand dollar bills

    Kellner said, as a servant spoon-fed him Caviar from a crystal platter in the backseat of his stretch limousine

    --
  • Time for government investigation/lawsuit against the DVD player manufactureres for illegal restraint of trade. Certainly the consumer reaction in this case clearly demonstrates the effect that the regional codes had on the marketplace.
  • Of course, the zoning practise has been seriously undermined by people buying Zone 1 DVD players over the 'net.

    Are you sure? Won't those Region 1 players generally only barf up a crappy NTSC signal which is of no use to a TV that can only take PAL/SECAM/...

    Not to mention the 120V/60Hz to 230V/50Hz conversion. The voltage transformation is easy, but this is the kind of device that typically will not like a different AC frequency. I'm sure they don't sell those things with autosensing power supplies...

    And if so, can anyone recommend me a player that will do multiple DVD regions, play MP3s from a CD, with an autosensing power supply, an RGB (SCART and that Sony tulip-plug thing) connector and switchable NTSC/PAL/SECAM output?

    I'm from mainland Europe, I'm based in the UK, and I currently live in the US. I haven't been able to buy any video hardware or media for years because of all these stupid incompatibilities.

    (Unless if you're only talking about computer DVD drives).

  • I'd do it except for two things; A) I don't have any moderator points & 2) I thought everyone knew that so I didn't think it was particularly informative.

    While I'm doing an inane post, I'd just like to plug my Australian site [optusnet.com.au] with the Livid and DeCSS stuff. (It's down the bottom in the software section.)

  • Well, get on with it then. And let us know when you succeed.

  • Well they better start suing a lot of people then because everywhere ( well almost, every selfrespecting DVD dealer sells them that way) here in Sweden you get your DVD region free... Well wait, don't tell I dold you.
    They ARE suing a lot of people after all...
  • So I can't spell today. I really should use preview.
  • The device sold under the brand name "Yamakawa" in Germany and presumably elsewhere, is identical to the "Raite", only with a different label. Hope it helps.
  • I was chatting with a guy from Malaysia a couple weeks ago about the whole DVD things going on. He said DVD players over there already have region control disabled, or you take it to a place that fixes it. He also said no one buys anything but region 1 DVDs cause the local ones are of such poor quality.
  • I don't understand, how is this different from gouging people?
  • Not quite: if you define "piracy" as "undermining theatrical ticket sales by selling video copies when the film industry doesn't want you to" -- which is how the MPAA thinks of it. In their mind, no copy of a film should be legal on video until after the local theatrical release: zoning is their way of enforcing that.

    Not to say it's a good idea, of course.
  • For those who haven't looked at UK dvd prices..

    Recent movies range from 15 uk pounds up to around 25 for some of the recent Fox ones (Titanic, Austin Powers 2 etc)
    Works out at 24 to 40 US bucks.

    However.. why do you assume that DVD's are imported from the US to be sold here? i would be rather shocked is all DVD's were made in the US of A. So shipping them over is a non issue.
  • All porn DVD's are region free

    And where's the moderator with the courage to mark this 'informative'?

    Chris
  • Doesn't a grocery store sell groceries? Just a point but Tescos is not simply a grocery store. They supply a great range of products from food to clothes to electrical hardware and cds. I'm a brit and have been there myself so take it from me, Tesco...much like Asda or Safeways can have quite a large impact upon a market. They did it with designer clothes and sold them cheap as a result.
  • This is a straightforward lie. The UK's DTI has been doing a survey of the prices of goods in countries outside the UK and EU and comparing them to domestic UK (and EU ad naueseam) prices.
    DVD's were one of the items that were significantly more pricey inside the UK (and EU, blardy blardy blah). I quote from the article

    "A recent Department of Trade and Industry survey identified DVDs as being more expensive here than in the United States"

    And here is a bit more about that survey..

    International American Toilet Paper Conspiracy
    ==============================================

    http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/000219/27/a0dxr.html

  • A quick glance through the back of most UK Hi-Fi Magazines shows most suppliers offer all their players with a regionless option for about £50 more.
    I bought a Samsung 709 (now Matrix compatible :->) and paid £30 more to make it regionless. The shop then provides a guarantee for the same duration as the manufacturer would have.

    No person I have spoken to was willing to buy a player unless it was region free, and I guess this is the UK market's response to this.
  • why does this story have a movie icon by it?
  • Canard: a false or unfounded report or story

    Really? I always thought that canard was french for duck... Oh well...
  • So... if [region coding] becomes illegal, do you think it'll be more likely that movie releases will actually occur at the same time in, say, the U.S. and the U.K.?

    My understanding is that the big reason for releasing movies at different times is that the (physical) films used in the U.S. are then sent overseas after theaters there stop showing it, because the cost of creating the film reels is in the 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars. Removing this expense is one goal of digital filmless distribution of films, as in Lucas's experiments with "Episode 1:TPM."
  • True, CDs are cheaper in the US - the problem being that lots of good stuff simply doesn't get a US release, due to the US' notoriously music markets conservatism. The result is that I tend to buy a lot of Jap/Euro imports, which tend to run $15-$20 - *more* expensive than the European prices.

    And I'm not talking really obscure stuff here, albums by Catatonia, Air, Daft Punk, Saint Etienne, all available only on import.

    Nick

  • If I want to watch an imported Japanese porn flick on my plain-vanilla Pioneer DVD player, I should have every right to
    All porn DVD's are region free (AFAIK; I haven't watched them all :-)
    --
  • Nope, that won't happen in the UK, because the regionalization battle for players has been utterly lost by the studios in this country: virtually all hifi and home cinema retailers sell de-regionalized DVD players now, and the major suppliers either offer their own warranties to cover chipped players, or else offer mods that don't alter the hardware and hence don't invalidate the original warranty.

    As an example, the Pioneer 717 is one of the best "quality" multi-region-mod'd players, despite being around for a year now, and the prices have plummeted recently. You can get de-regionalized units from literally hundreds of outlets, one of the best being www.techtronics.com as their "E-Mod" maintains your original warranty and is totally transparent (region-switching is automatic). And it plays everything you throw at it, including "difficult" DVDs like The Matrix. I just love mine. And since it allows me to play Region 1 (USA) DVDs on my UK PAL TV, I can happily boycott regionalization by never again buying R2 DVDs. (They're crap anyway, for various reasons.)

    Mind you, despite losing the *player* regionalization war, the studios are still pushing regionalized *media* in a big way. The clued-up movie buff is bypassing all that though, simply by buying their DVDs directly over the Internet from the US. It's a win-win situation now that so many players are multi-region, because not only are R1 DVDs better quality, but they're cheaper too. The customer is winning the battle here, at the moment.
  • I saw it at the Virgin Megastore in Le Louvre, Paris. They sell zoneless DVD players. On top of that, it's about the only kind of appliance they sell there. I guess they do it in order to be able to import the films themselves. Note that Virgin is independent of any music / film distributor.
  • This seems, in some respects, similar to the DeCSS challenge on the MPAA / DVD-CCA's methods. 'Cept this approach has some $$ (if I could make a pound sign, I'd use that :) behind it.

    The funny thing is, I'd bet dollars to DRAM that we won't see a suit over this, nor will anybody be dragged out of their house and questioned all day.

    Way to go, Tesco [tesco.co.uk]!
  • I'm considering buying a PSX2 ( play station 2 ) for a DVD player. However, Sony is one of the major 'evil freedom squishers'... how can you purcahse a DVD player without supporting the comanay?

    Send in complaints with registraion card?

    Buy on eBay, not retail.

    What?
  • Is this serious? How stupid do you have to be to build a DVD player like this? Lets say I have a friend who imports heaps of DVDs from Japan and the US (I do). I live in Oz, so I would naturally have a DVD player that plays the Australian region, whatever that is (I don't). If my hypothetical DVD player has a way of switching regions, but some hidden limit, say 50 changes, I'd probably go through that in a few months. If I get stuck with a non-local region all I'd see is that my DVD player suddenly won't switch back and therefore appears broken. If there's no mention in the manual about this stuff, then I just take it back to the shop and they have to replace it. Retail chains would be livid! It would cost them a fortune in DVD deck returns. How can it possibly be a good idea in anyone's mind - even a middle-manager's?
  • Gerald Holmes [freeyellow.com], is that you?

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • Moderate up please. This point isn't being made often enough. Without organization all this ranting and preaching to the converted is getting us nowhere.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • Hey look. I bought a playstation and i use a game enhancer to play my games. It is 100% LEGAL to use the Game Enhancer, or any similar tool like it, with MY playstation. Sony realises the HUGE market for the Game Enhancer, which plugs into the back of older psx's. They do not have the authority to make them halt production on these units. So what did they do. They changed the spec on the PSX. They removed the paralell port on the back of the new PSXs to "reduce costs". Simple solution. They have the tech. But we will always be able to adjust. My $0.02
  • ...sort of -- though probably not how you think.

    Region codes are, at least in part, the result of the film industry practise of releasing films much later overseas than in North America. Very often, a film won't arrive in theatres in Europe until it's already gone to video in the US. If someone could then sell US videos in Europe, this would undercut the theatrical revenue from the films, since a portion of the potential audience would have seen the films on video.

    Tape didn't create much of a problem since the standards conflicts between NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. The film industry was threatened by the idea that there could be one format usable all over the world at the same time, and insisted on the regional codes to allow them to continue with their practise of releasing films later overseas.

    Of course, the zoning practise has been seriously undermined by peopel buying Zone 1 DVD players over the 'net.
  • Alliance/Atlantis, the product of a merger between the two largest film/video distributors in Canada, sells DVDs that are different from the US ones, and got into big trouble (esp from Miramax and Di$ney) for it!
    You can only get a Region 1 "Meet the Feebles" in Canada
    Some more info at DVDresource [dvdresource.com] and you can buy some at DVD depot [dv-depot.com]


    Pope
  • I hadn't even considered the trade issues in region coding before; I wonder what the WTO would think of them?
  • I've been saying this since the DeCSS first blew up: what they're really fighting is your ability to bypass region codes. It's obvious that the injunctions aren't about piracy, and no other explanation makes sense (save perhaps rampant cluelessness).

    Perhaps I'm wrong. But it will be interesting to see whether they remain so avid about stomping out DeCSS once the the public revolts against region codes.

    --
  • > How did this come about? Did the MPAA forget to put a restriction in the DVD licence forbidding makers to allow any zone playing?

    Just a guess, but they probably forsaw the scale of liability when some court finally struck region codes down. Rather than recall 200 million players, they would just announce the secret workaround. Now it has leaked out in advance for certain players. I won't be surprised to hear that every player has a disablement that Joe User can manage, but would probably never guess.

    --
  • > I'm glad to see the hi-fi hackers involved.

    Me too. A year or so ago I mentioned the anti-MP3 hysteria to a hi-fi enthusiast friend of mine, and he hadn't even heard of it. But he was in town last week and I thought I'd preach the anti-DVD religion to him, and the phrase "DVD" was hardly out of my mouth before he blurted out "That's evil!" I was so taken aback I had to ask him to clarify what he was saying. It turns out that the USA hi-fi press is about as keen on the whole DVD thing as most of us are.

    Oh, yeah. He even knew about Jon, and either he or the rags he reads pin the 6-mo delay in DVD audio squarely on DeCSS. His comment on that whole deal what that the delay will probably surrender the field to Sony's competing format.

    --
  • What? You mean there are scenes you can't pause?

    Ugh! The whole idea of digital video for a lot of people is being able to get clear stills and to single-frame through things.

    The bit about not being able to skip ads really pisses me off, I'll *never* buy a DVD with it, even if I end up with a player that doesn't enforce it. The Mummy does this too.

    Other people may want DeCSS for piracy, I want it to get rid of all the bullshit they impose.

    You know, the DeCSS code is what they have an injunction against, not all publishing of the method used. That was legally obtained. It shouldn't be long until a big hardware company without media links (Sony owns a studio, so will toe the MPAA line) produces a player than simple bypasses CSS. Then we'll not only get cheaper players but also ones that don't include all the corporate baggage.

  • First, I'm posting up here so that you would see it.

    Secondly, I'm probably end up being long winded, but I think I have something to tell you, which will be of value to you.

    The consumer enters an agreement with a retailer/producer, in the intent of keeping their part of the bargain. When it later is shown that the provider has somehow entered that agreement with no intention of giving the consumer the value she expects, the consumer will react.

    It's animal instinct.

    The question which increasingly is asked is "where is the consumer power?" It is of course in our hands, but to show how that work, we have to use the British Church Lady Option.

    Tesco, if I'm not mistaken, is selling lots of environmental friendly goods, and stuff not made by children.

    One reason for that is that local parishoners started collecting their reciepts from local super-markets, and totalling them for each month. Then they went to the local store and said, hey, we're using about UKP 10.000,- at your store every month, we wan't certain standards, or we'll go elsewhere.

    Consumer power is in our hands, but to use it effectively we have to organize. We have to collect our receipts of DVD, cinema and video rentals for a month or two, then we'll total our amounts and say to the industry: "This is us, slashdotters, we're using around USD 100.000,- each month on movies. Now you follow our lead, or we will stop visiting movies, and rally many more for our cause."

    Utopia, perhaps, but look at Great Britain, learn from the parishes there, they started locally, and now stores in Britain is acting.

    Sincerely, Paul@conifer-developments.com

  • Well, consumers showed how much they liked Divx. Now they're showing how much they like region coding.

    At least a couple of hardware manufacturers are benefitting...

  • While definately not as nice a price as the Circuit City $150-$190
    Circuit City online [circuitcity.com] has them listed at $179.99
    http://www.circu itcity.com/detail.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0228002481. 0950906976@@@@&BV_EngineID=dalhckjeegibe mfcfkmcgcg.0&bookmark=bookmark_0&oid=18772&index=0 [circuitcity.com]

    Buy.com [buy.com] also seems to have a limited lot of them for sale also at $255.95.
    http://www.buy.com/clearance/ product.asp?sku=70000060 [buy.com]

    I thought I would throw that in for the geek that must have one and can't find them anywhere else or doesn't want to get out of bed :)

    (also interesting in terms of comparison)


  • It's getting a lot bigger than that. I haven't found it on the web yet, but if you have a dead tree USAToday look at the front page and you'll see that the MPAA, RIAA, CBS, NBS, Disney/ABC, NFL, NBA, NCAA, NHL, and all their business partners have formed the Copyright Assembly, whose first major action was to assure everyone they would sue for each and every copyright infringement they found.

    --
  • Try this link [usatoday.com] for an online version.


    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
  • The same thing happened with the TurboGrafix 16 system. The games available over here were really shitty and didn't sell well. In Japan, it was really big, competing neck and neck with the Super Famicom.

    You can buy (or build) conversion slots for playing the Japanese HuCards on a North American system.

    It's the same thing all over again, except that many people pirate PSX games with a mod chip. You can get anti-pirate mod chips though.
  • but it is illegal for a store clerk to suggest to you how to do it

    To be precise, it is a breach of contract rather than a criminal issue. The police won't arrest the clerk, but if the MPAA gets wind of it then they will sue the clerk's employer, and the employer will fire the clerk.

    Paul.

  • I'm really glad to see a corporate entity with somewhat of a soul. In a utilitarian sense, they are just doing what's good for the economy and good for their bottom line: reducing costs to boost profit. Good for Tesco.

    Now the question is: How is this done and can off-the-shelf DVD equipment in the United States and Canada be modified in a like way? And what penalty -- if any -- will the MPA (or MPAA... never got the two straightened out) impose upon Tesco for selling a unit which can be made to defeat zones? I view it somewhat akin to overclocking: The manufacturer provides the ability, but assumes no legal responsibility if you screw up. If the device is in your possesion, you should be able to modify it as you wish.



    ----
  • As I understand it, region encoding was created in large part to prevent DVDs sold in one region from being purchased in another region where they are not available because the movie is still in theatres.

    You've been sold a bill of goods. Obviously, if this were the case, DVD releases of movies whose theater runs have long since come and gone would be region-free, and they generally aren't.
    /.

  • I find it hard to believe that Film studios still cling to the belief that region codes are about piracy.

    They don't believe that any more than Bill Clinton believes that a Lewinsky is not really sex. This rationale is a smoke-screen for cartelization.
    /.

  • Here on OZ, it can cost AU$15 to see a second run movie (they were run in the US first months before). They are typicaly $12.50 ($US8.12) in Melbourne. In New Zealand they are much cheaper and more in line with US pricing.

    Funny thing is New Zealand makes Region Coding of DVD's illegal. They understand that the only ones who benifit from region coding are US movie companies.

    I'm wondering if the DVD region coding could be made illegal in Oz based on the discrimination of other cultures.
  • This is actually great news.

    You see I like the sound of the words "Britain's largest supermarket chain" taking the very same people who are responsible for trying to destroy our right to fair use to court for price fixing.

    I'm hoping if this keeps up, we'll be able to start using the term "embattled MPAA (or DVD CCA)" or hear phrases like "a dark cloud hangs over the MPAA."

    Also this is great, because in my opinion the reason for destroying fair use is the same as the reasons for region coding, to generate profits at the expense of consumer's rights. Having a reasonably big corporation come out and say the same thing is always a plus (provided we are careful... remember when AOL was for open cable access? Welcome them to our side, but don't leave the fight to them.).

  • You shold probable moderate this whole fucking thread up (well posts which give information about getting regionless DVD players anyway). The more people know how to get a regionless DVD player the better off we are! Actually, moderation is insufficent, we really need to post a whole slashdot feature explaining all the tricks and giving a FAQ for getting regionless DVD.

    Also, if you live in Europe you are one of the people getting directly fucked over by the MPAA. One form of protest which I think would be VERY effective is to buy yourself a regionless DVD player, buy american DVDs of movies before they are released in Europe, take your DVD and Player to a local bar and watch the DVD with your friends.. and hand out fliers about how people can get their own regionless DVD player and why they should fight the MPAA. Europe has a real chance to avoid the crap like the DMCA that has happened in the U.S. so we you really need to build some political support. This sort of protest will raise awairness, screw the MPAA out of ticket sales, and be lots of fun!

    Questions: Dose the DVD lissensing restriction keep independant film makers from having as much force in the market? And is there much of an argument that the MPAA is using DVD to force European film studios to be beholden to US corperations?
  • The Hitachi DVP-250 is region free. I bought one whilst in the UK and have had success with both region 2 & region 5 disks. Mind you, it was rather expensive, but has S-Video out, digital out (for DTS) zoom & a whole raft of other features.
  • There is another implication here too:
    If the information is out how to make a particular brand of DVD player regionfree, sales go to the sky. Now all marketing has to do is leaking the relevant information somehow and get it public ("We are very concerned about site XXX distributing DeZonePhonyPlayer.zip but what can we do about it?"). We can encourage this starategy by circulating that information even further, especially which players are prone to DeZoning.

    The implicit punchline here: "It's not a bug, it's a feature."
  • Whilst I dislike some of Tesco's policies, they have recently done several similar things to try to reduce the cost of overpriced goods. They unofficially imported Levi jeans from the US, as they're extortionately expensive over there. That landed them in trouble with Levi's. Then they did the same with expensive perfumes - again pissing off the manufacturers. A few weeks ago, they announced that they are going to start importing cars from Europe*, where they are much cheaper than here in Britain.

    Now they want to import cheap DVD's, I guess. Good luck to them. Maybe if more large companies put pressure on the film industry, this fscking stupid zoning will be dropped.

    HH

    * OK, technically Britain is part of Europe, but we don't always see ourselves that way.
  • If any of you have been in the UK and looked at CD prices, they're just massively inflated as well (at least the last time I was there). It's not limited to DVD media sadly. The prices I saw were a good 20% higher. I noticed the problem in other countries as well. I brought my CD collection and used it to trade with some people I knew for some other things, worked pretty well.
  • <i>Did the MPAA forget to put a restriction in the DVD licence forbidding makers to allow any zone playing?</i>

    Doesn't look like it: check out what the DVD-CCA is saying:
    <url: "http://www.dvdcca.org/dvdcca/rcp.html">
    --
  • If I buy a DVD, and travel to the UK, why should I not be able to play my DVD on a friend's DVD player in that zone? The DVD was purchased, it should be completely legal.

    To a limited extent, I can understand that it can slow pirating; since the pirates must buy an original to copy from each zone in which they plan to sell it. However, for an industry making the kind of money found in piracy, do you really think that having to buy seperate originals for each zone's encoding is really going to stop anything? It's as absurd as the concept that encoding slows pirating. The pirates down't care about the encoding, they copy the fully encoded data and burn it back onto a disk identically.

    The only pirate slowed by these techniques are the relatively low tech/low volume home copier. Not an adequate offset to the effect of preventing the consumer from freely making legal use of what they purchased.
  • It hurts foreign language teachers more so. PAL NTSC is a big enough pain for them. They have to buy special decks that convert the signals so that their students can be more in touch with the culture. Now, with DVD region zoning, they would have to buy special DVD players just so they can show a foreign film. Now, in my German class, my teachers shows lots of foreign films and various other snippets of TV and such that is usually recorded in PAL. She bought a special VCR to play them, now if she wants to show the original German version of say Run Lola Run, she has to buy a special (and possibly illegal?) DVD player. I think that's a bit excessive for "preventing piracy".
  • Maybe they should file a complaint with the WTO (yes, the World Trade Organization). Isn't this what the WTO is for?
  • I find it hard to believe that Film studios still cling to the belief that region codes are about piracy. They stop no-one pirating a DVD, just as if they wern't there it would not help people to pirate them.

    As many other people have said, it is a method of stopping us in the UK buying cheap DVD's from America. We can buy them from Amazon, + postage for about 4 GBP less than they cost here.

    I am surprised they have not started to sue the writers of the software that disables region checking.

    If I had a lot of money I would certainly take them to court here in the Uk on the basis of it being anti-free trade.
  • I saw the Apex DVD player advertised in a Circuit City ad in yesterday's newspaper, highlighting its MP3 capability.
  • When I was first out shopping for DVD equipment I honestly told every dealer on the Tottenham court Road that I wanted to play Region 1 discs, explaining that I would be returning to Region 1 in the future. Every single time I was told by retailers that it was not legal for them to discuss or give me information about how to make sure the equipment I got would do such a thing... That's what they told me at the stores, and it's damn unusual given Tottenham Court Road's fetish for all things tech. Some browsing on the web, however, and I'm a happy puppy.

    I honestly don't know if that law's set in stone, you'll obviously have seen magazine adverts for shops that offer code free players, but that was my experience.

  • The price of the DVD isn't the biggest issue, nor even the timing of its release for that matter.

    So you live in the U.S. or in Australia, and you happen to speak French. The French put out a great new movie, and you want to watch it. Say it's not released in the English speaking countries - it's only of interest to French speakers. So the the only way you can get a copy of it is by ordering it from France.

    But there, because of the bloody zoning restrictions, you're stuck. The DVD is made for the European zone, you live in the U.S. or in Australia or wherever, so you can't play the DVD, and you have no way of getting the DVD in your own zone.

    The whole zoning thing stinks. It's enough to put me off buying a DVD. All the best of luck to Tesco! Good on them for taking a stand against this stupidity!

    Rizzer
  • Actually,
    The Apex AD-600A DVD player has an a not so secret menu that alows the use to change regions and turn off macrovision (so you can play back through a VCR). And it play MP3s. This link [www.nert-o...ltnerd-out] has instructions on how to access the menu and discussions groups.
  • Try here [nerd-out.com].

    Sorry
  • Sadly, the Wharfedale DVD players sold out very quickly, so I ended up getting one from Dixons (big UK electrical goods retailer) instead. This also had a region hack on the remote where by pressing a couple of buttons you get prompted for region code... This works brilliantly!
    Quite a lot of DVD players for sale here have similar hacks. There's a very good page here [reviewer.co.uk]
    If not, there are loads of places who will open the player up and tweak it...
    OK - so there are other differences, such as PAL here, NTSC in the states. But most modern TV sets sold here in the last few years should cope admirably. I've got a three year old Sony and it shows NTSC perfectly.
    The whole region thing is rampant protectionism - designed to stop us importing from another country where prices may be cheaper. So the UK branch of a film company charges more and tries to stop people getting the same movie from their US branch where it's cheaper and has more extras.
    There's also the censorship angle - where a Region 2 DVD sold in the UK will be subject to BBFC (British Board of Film Censorship) cuts.
    But it looks like some companies have got the right idea. It could be that many companies making DVD players don't give a toss about the region system and deliberately leave a back door - easily accessible through the remote - so that those of us who want to can get around the whole stupid region thing.
    I can buy books from America. I can buy CDs from America. Why the heck shouldn't I be allowed to buy a DVD from America - with lots of extras (documentaries, etc) which aren't available on the Region 2 version?
  • The zoning not only places absurd limits on movies, it can also render your DVD player useless. Many manufacturers of DVD players, both hardware and software accounted for the fact that some people may move during the time they owned a DVD player and allowed the changing of the zone to your current residence. However, there is obviously a limit on the number of times you can change the zone, or you could change it for every movie. If you happen to change the zone to watch a foreign DVD and you have maxed out the number of times you can change, you're SOL if you want to watch a North American movie, so choose wisely...

  • Two comments (Score:3)

    by Frank Sullivan ( 2391 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @09:39AM (#1261845) Homepage
    First, choose your enemies wisely. Fighting some poor teenager from the frozen wastelands is easy. Fighting gigantic megacorps is hard. The DVD thought police are making dangerous enemies, enemies on their own turf (see, hackers (in the non-perjorative sense) are not going to fight the battle on their turf. Other corporations will, tho).

    Second, what 13-headed hydra of a committee DESIGNED their encryption specs? This is the second glaring hole found.
    ---

  • Zoning Is Inherently Problematic (Score:3)

    by dwdyer ( 5238 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @09:54AM (#1261846) Journal
    Early DVD decoder cards for PCs were pretty much wide-open. You could change your region code at will. Now, more and more decoder cards have a little EPROM (or somesuch) that counts the number of region changes, and if it's changed around too much, it will stop allowing you to change the region code and you'll be stuck.

    Some cards will set the region code based on the first DVD you play (more "user-friendly" that way), and if you happen to have a multi-region DVD, you're stuck thinking the damned thing doesn't work.

    Decoder card manufacturers naturally don't like to advertise this, nor are DVD manufacturers hot to talk about zoning, because most people keep the player in one region and won't use DVDs from other regions.

    The media types will one day discover that you can't increase profits by throwing roadblocks in front of your customers.

  • That would be illegal in the US... (Score:3)

    by Cardinal Biggles ( 6685 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @09:46AM (#1261847)
    Under the DMCA in the US, circumventing the region code system would be illegal, since it "effectively controls access to a copyrighted work". In Europe, we can still do this.

    <SARCASM>
    Well, at least you guys are free to own guns.
    </SARCASM>

  • Re:The (Non) Future of Zone Encryption (Score:3)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @02:01PM (#1261848) Homepage Journal
    Don't you just love the bait and switch technique? Phase I - we give the public players that can play discs from all over the world. Phase II (when they want to upgrade, or their old one dies) - Oh, now you can only play local discs, better replace most of your collection and now you're stuck with higher local prices and delayed releases, but you love the quality so much you can go back to VHS.

    Reminds me of drug dealers.

  • Re:Piracy prevention indeed. (Score:3)

    by ralphclark ( 11346 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @05:06PM (#1261849) Journal
    The rot has spread to the UK too.

    On two consecutive mornings this week, the morning news programme on BBC Radio 4 carried "reports" where BPI (British Phonographic Industry, i.e. the UK's record industry body) told how widespread piracy was putting everyone in the media industry out of business. Then they went on to interview senior police officers who verified this. There was an air of unreality about the whole thing, though. The people interviewed were hardly well-known; I guess you can always find someone to support your view whatevr it happens to be, especially if it means they get to go "gee, look ma, I was on the radio".

    But in the second programme, things took a distinct turn for the worse. After a police officer spoke first, we heard somebody declaring that the same people running "piracy" operations on CD's were also dealing in arms, hard drugs and illegal hard pornography! They said it was a fact that the revenue from piracy of CD's and videos was financing arms for terrorist outfits.

    But that's not all...immediately after that quote, they then had a guy come on who reiterated the arms connection, a guy speaking in an Irish accent.

    I'm convinced by this that the BBC are seeking to manipulate public opinion on behalf of the BPI and other allied bodies. I suppose they think they are protecting their own interests since the BBC have a huge storehouse of recorded material that they see as "intellectual property" which can be ripped off.

    It just saddens me to see the BBC stooping so low. Misinformation and cynical manipulation we might have expected from big business and politicians, but to see the BBC doing this just makes me sick to my stomach.

    So the UK too is now at war. Only, most people don't know it and probably never will before those evil bastards manage to silence us forever.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction

  • The (Non) Future of Zone Encryption (Score:3)

    by Trickster Coyote ( 34740 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @11:10AM (#1261850) Homepage
    Hmmm. A little extrapolation...

    A manufacuturer makes a DVD player that allows you to play discs from any zone and sales sky rocket. Other mfgs, needing to compete, also make their players to play any zone. Pretty soon "Any Zone Play" becomes a standard selling feature on all DVD players. So even if MPAA continues its practice of zone ecrypting its products, it is all moot.

    So here we have a customer and (foreign) retailer rebellion that will lead to the defeat of the zoning scheme. It's easy to see the supermarket's concern: it stands to lose sales to Internet orders from the US. Of course, once some entrepreneur in India or Zimbabwe starts up an Internet DVD sales site, even North Americans will be flocking to buy Any Zone players and US and Canadian retailers will be demanding and end to zoning.

    How did this come about? Did the MPAA forget to put a restriction in the DVD licence forbidding makers to allow any zone playing? Or was there some loophole in the wording that allows the players to be switchable manually, but perhaps not automatically?

    And what is the MPAA going to do about it? Are the going to take the manufacturers to court to try to stop them? Even if they have grounds based on the DVD licence, might they risk having the whole scheme challenged as violating international trade laws?

    And how does this situation affect the DeCSS fiacso? With zoning being made moot, is there any point to even needing a licence to make a player? Even if the ulterior motive is to get a precedent ruling on a DMCA reverse engineering situation, this mooting of region coding would seem to take some strength out their prima facie arguments of the sacredness of their disc encryption.

  • Industry's point of view (Score:3)

    by ajs ( 35943 ) <ajs.ajs@com> on Friday February 18, 2000 @02:55PM (#1261851) Homepage Journal
    Enought people here seem to not know why country codes exist, that I feel it makes sense to go over the reasoning. I'm not saying that this is sound business practice, or that it's justified. I'm just explaining the reasoning.

    The basic problem is that most of the worlds most popular Enlgish-speaking movies are made in the United States (some of that is changing with Canada, New Zealand and the UK producing more and more winners). Because of this, movies tend to be released in the US first. Now, they can't really release them in more than one to three countries at a time (just doing the whole US is quite a strain) because of the logistics. You really want to have a big media event surrounding the release, so you gather up some of your actors and crew and screen the movie for select folk with a red carpet and lots of photographers.

    Ok, given that you do that one to three countries at a time, and schedules are hard to sync up, you very often wind up in the situation that by the time the film is opening in some late-on-the-list part of the world, the video release has hit shelves in the US. So, you show up to do your premier and everyone yawns, 'cause they've been buying import versions for weeks.

    What's worse, the money that a movie makes tends to be in the form of 1/2 of a bell-curve (the descending part) for the theater release and a much more gradual, but simmilarly shaped curve when the video comes out. So, if you reduce the impact of opening weekend, you might easily lose a major chunk of the sales for the box-office, and that sales boost you were expecting from the video release is now moot.

    There are holes in this theory, and let's face it, Hollywood is not run on quality data-gathering operations. Personally, I think that staging one huge opening per movie and broadcasting it to the world simultaneous with the release of the film in theaters would make more sense, at least for the english-speaking countries. It would require more pre-release work because you have to go through the censorship machinery of all of those countries before your release, but the impact would be greater, I suspect. You could move around, and have the opening for each film be in a different country, thus allowing people in those countries to get access. Certainly the first bunch of films that did this would get huge amounts of press.

    But, it's probably better to just let Hollywood die under the weight of foriegn competition. More and more work is moving out to Canada and NZ, and this is good. Hollywood will have to develop new ways of coping. In a way, what's going on now reflects what happened in the comic book industry in the late 80's and early 90's. Back then independants were becoming wildly popular, because they dared to have original content. In the end, the result was that most of the indies went broke when the market consolidated, a few strengthened and did well (e.g. Dark Horse) and DC (Superman, Batman, et al.) ended up creating a whole section just for doing interesting adult-themed, story-focused "comics" that didn't all center on super-heroes (e.g. Sandman, which has been mentioned a couple of times on Slashdot). This is essentially what Hollywood is in the middle of. Content is slowly winning.

    As for country codes, it's just an artifact, a minor spin-off of these industry forces. The whole idea will seem foolish in 10 years. How can country codes prevail once movies are delivered over the Internet? I'm waiting for the day when every theater has 2 screens dedicated to showing whatever an on-line vote picked for the day. Once theaters can download movies and pay on a per-play basis instead of locking in weeks at a time, they will be able to offer whatever non-in-first-run movies will fill a theater. This will allow popular movies to keep making money in the theater even after they're on video. Right now, theater owners don't want to lock-in to a movie that's already on video, 'cause they can't guarantee that people will come see it in the theater vs. watching it on video.

    Wow, this rambled a bit more than I had wanted. I think I'll stop now.

  • Re:Different zones missing out? (Score:3)

    by gorilla ( 36491 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @10:37AM (#1261852)
    There is a huge difference between wanted to wanting to "release to coincide" and "preventing you from using your DVD on the 'wrong' player".

    Many items have seperate releases in NA & in Europe (& probably other markets, but I have no expericence there). Books, CDs and movies are often avilable first in one or the other area. There are rational reasons for this, they are different markets and sometimes the promoter cannot afford to promote in both markets at the same time, and actors, auothros etc obviously cannot be in two places at once. No-one objects to this, it's a fact of life.

    I can obviously read a book bought from anywhere, and I can buy a VCR tape from wherever I want, and play it. The only restriction is that different countries use different formats, and that's historical, with many modern VCRs handle oth NTSC & PAL/SECAM. I can also handle the formats of books used in Spain and France (With a little difficulty, but that's my fault nothing to do with the technology).

    I emigrated a few years ago, and took lots of CD's with me. I still listen to those CD's, and I've also bought several imported CD's over the years, first those brought over from region 1, then those brought over from Europe. I have books bought from all over the world, and I could have taken my VCR tapes with me if I decided to buy a multiformat VCR.

    Can anyone give a rational reason why DVD should be any different to these other media?

  • Non compliant DVD player (Score:3)

    by Artemis3 ( 85734 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @05:19PM (#1261853)
    I would love to see more, and more "unlicensed" / "open" / "non aproved" DVD players out there. Why? standard aproved ones needs to meet certain minimun requirements (and pay) in order to obtain a proper decoding key from "the big ones"; these requirements include adding an expensive "macrovision" chip and paying a license to Macrovision for its use as well. As you may be guessing, this of course increases manufacture costs per unit. Many of us will want a player who does not ever enable macrovision; and of course ignore these silly region codes. Í know this is difficult for people living in the United States; as selling such devices could be illegal. But for all of us who live outside, we don't need to pay extra costs for "features" that we will never use. Making "unlicensed/unaproved" players would save manufacturers money which could be better used for adding more "real" features like multiple NTSC/PAL/DTV(progressive) outputs on the same device, DTS, whatever digital Surround, etc. I've been told, the way the "system" works in the US is to sell a "fully compliant" authorized device; which if you "somehow tamper" in a non advertised/the manufacturer holds no responsability/you will lose your warranty way, your device "could malfunction" and "fail" to adhere to the standard and therefore not enable the requested (by disc) features (say, region lock, fastforward lock, and macrovision) because the client was told to never open and move that jumper in there or press the non documented/not in the manual/i didn't tell you sequence of buttons in your remote control; that made the device somehow "malfunction". In other words, when there is a customer demand, there will always be a supply, so why not sincere yourselves and start doing things the Right Way (tm) on the first place?

    Did you know that, the release of the DVD format was delayed at least a year because hollywood refused to accept a digital format that could mean the end of the NTSC/PAL pseudo control they had until then? Since a movie could be stored in mpeg2 at 24 frames/s, and then the device could output the signal at PAL or NTSC or whatever in real time; the studios would inmediatly loose the pseudo restriction they had by delaying the release of the movies on video in the proper format (aka, the other non NTSC ones) that prevented "too many people" doing casual imports (since they had to buy extra equipment, to view NTSC, etc) it seems that they still are unaware of the very popular pseudo-ntsc capability that many "non NTSC" devices had all these years, since for them its very simple to view NTSC imports than for us is to see PAL... Anyway region codes and macrovision were added at the last moment, and even then only half of them agreed to support DVD. See, the format was never intended to use those "features" on the first place; that's why they were so simple to "ignore", even from day 0; early DVD players don't even seek for the region code byte or even have the macrovision chip.

    With the crack of CSS, stupid hollywood fears on loosing control would rise again against the format, and that explains the current DVDCA attitude; althought it never justifies it. Will the DVD format die? If manufacturers go subversive and start making non compliant devices; ignoring DVDCA complains (although they would have problems for sales in the US) therefore making DVD players as cheap as they really are, it will then last way longer than expected; even without Hollywood contempt, alternate markets will take their place (say, what you insist to call pirates) and many, many devices will be sold worldwide; with or without studios blessings. They could take advantage by adopting it and forget about their stupid already lost control on "movie release schedule" (it's more let the middlemans be happy) or go totally against it (Hi J. Lucas) and let the alternate market take full control (and revenue).

    The way you see it, DVD manufacturers could always win, many of them are also part of the "Consortium", and hey! they even own some of the studios too! (Sony anyone?) Of course if the format is pushed to the death (very unlikely now that *anyone* can make their own player, the real treat of DeCSS to the Consortium) they would lose, So if the MPAA don't pay more attention, they could make angry some of their big Associates...

    In the end, we will all use Opendvd, or "unlicensed" or whatever digital open format we see fit (even VCDs with mpeg2 video aka SuperVCDs aka VCD2s get distributed by alternate means these days); they could be against their customers, or with them; they may get some of the revenue or none at all, they may adopt or kill the format, we will see. One thing is clear, the way they used to do things, vertically by maintaing an iron grip control over their customers is over. Same goes to Music Recording Industries; only that we don't need them already anymore, with CD-Rs and MP3s.

  • Region Codes (Score:3)

    by mprovost ( 96876 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @10:33AM (#1261854)
    I always understood that region codes were there not so much to gouge people (although I'm sure that is a bonus) but because of the staggered release schedule of films.

    I guess they only make x prints of a film for movie theatres, and then ship them around the world, first in the US, then Europe, then Asia, etc. This is to avoid the cost of making a copy of the film for every theatre in the world.

    What can happen is that movies are available on video/DVD in the US before they have even played in theatres elsewhere. They want to prevent people from buying (or worse, renting) the DVD instead of going to the theatres.

  • Re:Overpaying? (Score:3)

    by uglyduckling ( 103926 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @01:39PM (#1261855) Homepage
    It's interesting that no one ever points to the cost of laser discs (mentioned in my last post) as the result of a cartel. No, for that we have to wait for something popular with the /. community to cost too much.

    I guess you missed the point of my original message: If you don't like paying the price for DVDs, then buy the video tape. Or rent the DVD, or VHS, or LD. You use the word cartel, but ignore the possibility of just ignoring the cartel by NOT buying in to their "insideous" plan by simply not purchasing their wares.

    The price of laser discs was high becuase they were niche-market. People who wanted the quality and the experience were willing to pay for it. This is the way vinyl records will probably go now: if you want a decent player and decently mastered/pressed records then it'll cost you, becuase very few people want the added enjoyment that people claim they have over CDs.

    DVDs are a different issue. They are a mass market product, which will gradually cause VHS to be phased out. Not immedietly, because we can't record yet, but they will, eventually. Now - with Laserdisc I could import American titles if I wanted to, but I would need to import a TV and voltage convertor to get it all to work. With DVD there's no technological barrier to watching DVDs anywhere.... except that which is forced on us, the consumer. Now, I don't think there's a problem with manufacturers selling anything they want. If they don't bow to consumer demands, they'll go out of business - who cares? It's their problem. But when they start arresting people for playing back movies which they legitimately own, that's going too far. I can't import movies from the US because they've been crippled. High street stores are scared to sell players that are multi-region in case they get accused of hacking. But the MPAA may just have met their match in Tesco, who are very used to getting their own way, and have the hard cash to back it up.

    I posted a comment in a previous DVD topic, about the way encryption keys could be used by the DVDCCA to effectively make obscelete ranges of players by simply not encoding the keys on certain discs. If you feel confident in the DVDCCA then read this [dvdcca.org] and tell me you don't feel scared. It seems to me that by letting earlier players be multi-region, they have seeded the market and let it grow, and now they're tightening the net. They've lied to movie studios and said that region coding is for anti-piracy; in fact it makes very little difference. I, for one, do not trust them.

  • Region coding is not about piracy. It's about staggered release schedules. This is why, even though extremely defeatable, region coding will not go away. A movie company makes prints of their movie and there's a limit to how many they can strike - these are exhibited in the U.S. first, for the most part, before moving on to the rest of the world. If a movie that's expected to do well doesn't go down successfully in the U.S., the staggered pattern allows a company to rethink its marketing and try it again in a new territory. This is the main reason behind region coding, not to mention that different companies have different rights to different territories (Fox has worldwide rights to Titanic, Paramount has it for North America).

    Add to this the idiocy of the BBFC: they demand that SUPPLEMENTS on DVDs, such as outtakes and making of documentaries, need a BBFC certficate in order to pass, henceforth the DVD producer has to submit that material and a fee to the BBFC. This is supposedly one of the reasons Criterion [criterionco.com] doesn't release their discs in the UK.

    Add to this that it is not technically illegal to chip, modify, or hack a DVD player to play all Region discs - but it is illegal for a store clerk to suggest to you how to do it or provide help with it. All European DVD players can play NTSC or PAL - and several have super easy hacks to defeat the coding, such as a combination to put in the remote. Search the web and thou shalt find...

    Now it gets even weirder. Some DVDs in the UK are released as anamorphic (enhanced for widescreen TVs) when they aren't in the U.S. because of wider market penetration of widescreen TVs in Europe.

    Region Coding is extremely defeatable. I recommend heartily anyone with a Windoze system to watch DVDs on to use the Creative Labs DXR3 kit - a DVD drive, and a dedicated decoder board ready for 5.1 surround sound for 150 - 200 US dollars. Go to This site [visualdomain.net] and download a 500 k app that lets you defeat region coding piece o cake. Basically, for about 150 dollars for DXR3, 300 dollars for my Videologic 5.1 surround kit, and a simple app I have a region free DVD player routed to my 16x9 capable television.

    I buy some Region DVDs of movies that haven't been released here in the U.K. because a) I'm an American, moving back to America in a year, and I want DVDs that will work there b) American DVDs tend to have more supplements and c) A movie in Central London will litearally cost you 20$ for a decent seat. This way I can watch a movie without a dim projector bulb and crappy reel changes and some idiot's mobile phone going off while they're talking during the movie.

  • Comment removed (Score:4)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @10:23AM (#1261857)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • My friend's $150 DVD player (Score:4)

    by VValdo ( 10446 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @09:46AM (#1261858)
    is called the RAITE AVPhile 715. His GF bought it for about $150 from Frys Electronics. Not only does it play DVDs, but also CDs, VCDs, and MP3s (ISO formatted). I think it's manufactured somewhere in Europe.

    *AND* we learned on the net that you can shut off region codes & Macrovision with certain sequences on the remote control.

    I found this too while looking for something else: http://www2.datatestlab.com/regionhacks/ - it seems to have info for circumventing regions on multiple players.

    thought someone might be interested,
    W
    -------------------

  • When will the lawsuit be filed? (Score:4)

    by TrentC ( 11023 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @09:48AM (#1261859) Homepage
    I expect that, since someone in the UK press has published information on how to circumvent controls on accessing copyrighted material, that the MPAA will file a lawsuit (or they will find someone in the UK willing to file on their behalf) posthaste.

    I mean, if a couple of "evil hackers" in Norway can't write a program to get around CSS, then why should "the hi-fi press" (?) in the UK be able to publish information on how to hack the units themselves?

    And isn't it interesting that the ones that can be set to play any region discs have skyrocketed in popularity? Now, would that be because people (the people in Britian, anyways) value the freedom that OpenDVD [opendvd.org], the EFF [eff.org] and others are championing on our behalf? Or is the MPAA and their apologists going to try to claim that the owners of these DVD players are all pirates?

    Jay (=

  • Open markets make better markets (Score:4)

    by nlh ( 80031 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @09:47AM (#1261860) Homepage
    "Film studios say zoning is designed to minimise piracy"

    Yeah....just like DeCSS is designed to maximize piracy. Sure.

    I'm a firm believer in allowing market forces to dictate the state of the market. DVD zoning is not a piracy prevention tool. It's an electronic measure for specifying market barriers - barriers which, in this age, should not be defined by artifical means. If I want to watch an imported Japanese porn flick on my plain-vanilla Pioneer DVD player, I should have every right to. If I want to watch a classic French film brought here from Europe, the same goes. Having a zoning system in place restricts perfectly legitimate uses of the DVD system and allows orchestrated price controls (like those that Tesco is fighting against) to exist.

    Now, granted, I am not a professional economist and can't speak for trade barriers, import restrictions, tariffs, etc. But the whole point of economic measures like those is allow the market to dictate the price of goods. If a Euro-zone DVD costs more to import because of a set tariff, then fine! If I'm willing to pay the price then I should at least have the ability to view the film. If UK DVDs are being priced artificially high, however, that's allowing the industry to leverage monopolistic price controls (i.e. zoning) and shouldn't continue.

    "Here here" to Tesco.

  • Piracy prevention indeed. (Score:5)

    by Duke of URL ( 10219 ) on Friday February 18, 2000 @09:32AM (#1261861)
    "Film studios say zoning is designed to minimise piracy. But Ms Cross said it was 'against the spirit of free competition and a potential trade barrier. We'll fight so the prices come down.'"

    I have to agree with Cross. The regional codes are more about protecting their "right" to profit gouge rather than to prevent piracy.

    We can defeat their regional codes.
    We can defeat their weak encryption schemes.

    Why don't they learn their lesson and just sell us our movies in a sensible way?

  • ...without having to do any hardware mods to the player (there are geeks who fear hardware). :)

    Slashdot covered this a while back, but what you want is the Apex AD-600A. You can get it at Circuit City for between $150 and $190 (CC has been playing with the price in different parts of the country, a "region-coding" of their own, I guess -- Circuit City can't be all good, now, they've got that DiVX legacy of evil to keep up with).

    CC doesn't keep them on the shelves, but just have the sales droid punch in "APX AD-600A" into his terminal if he doesn't know what you're talking about.

    When /. covered this product it was mainly over its ability to play MP3's. I don't personally care too much about that, but here's what I do like:

    • plays CD-R's and CD-RW's (many DVD players can't play CD-R's because of their different optical characteristics
    • you can assign yourself to any region, including bypass (region 0, which basically means you can only play discs without region protection) from the easter egg "loopholes" menu
    • you can turn off Macrovision from that same menu -- useful even for people who don't want to copy movies, as it enables you to daisy-chain the DVD player through your VCR to the TV. This can be necessary if you've got a paucity of AV jacks on the set or if you've already filled them up with other crap.
    • Zoom. Some player manufacturers put this only on higher-end models; I have no idea why. To create a product ghetto, I suppose. Once nice thing is that the Apex (apparently, I haven't been able to verify this personally) will use 16x9 enhancement information for a sharper zoom even on a lousy 4x3 television. A thoughtful touch. I couldn't find a way to pan the zoom window, though.
    • The price. Though it was offset by a bit since I had to buy some decent cables (see below), my net expenditure *still* came out well below what I would have paid for a "comparable" player, which actually would have been missing several features the Apex has.

    The disadvantages, in my opinion:

    • No optical outputs. Oh well.
    • No 5.1 outputs, either. The best route to go for high-end sound is an external decoder for AC-3 or DTS, anyway -- this player just makes it mandatory. (Yes, like every other civilized DVD player you can send the raw digital data bitstream out through an RCA jack.)
    • No jog shuttle.
    • Forward and reverse on audio CD's is a bit weird. You get an Alvin and the chipmunks effect, and if you move too fast, it can just plain get stuck -- you have to stop and restart.
    • As others have noted, the menu interface to MP3 CD's leaves a bit to be desired (8.3 filenames only, poor directory navigation).
    • Changing state between two different playback modes is often a bit dodgy. For instance, there is an "Enter/Play" button in the middle of the menu arrows, in addition to a "Play/Pause" button at the bottom of the remote. Sometimes, only one of those will do what you want. Also, in many cases you can't go straight from, say, "Step" (forward frame-by-frame) to fast-forward. You have to go back to "Play" first.
    • Ships with a set of really marginal cables. Buy a set of good cables to go with it.

    Anyway, many of the above ergonomic limitations could be overcome by revisions to the firmware, I'm sure. And there seems to be enough of a hacker community around this player that people might just end up hacking the firmware (you'd have to buy an EEPROM replacement for the existing firmware chip, though -- while socketed for easy replacement, it is not reprogrammable). I wonder if Apex is nuts enough to open-source their firmware and turn the geeks loose on it?

    Oh yeah, how to get to the loopholes menu: without a disc in the player, "SETUP" -> select the preferences item -> "STEP" -> chapter/track back "|<<" -> chapter/track forward ">>|". Have fun...

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