Page 1 of Whats the point in different Region discs????

Whats the point in different Region discs???? I mean , if companies from other countries dont want us Brits to watch any of their discs then how come its legal to buy multi-region players in this country? Surely they should have clamped down on us by now?????

Contrary to popular urban myth, the film studios and hardware manufacturers cannot currently take legal action against either importers of discs from other regions or sellers of upgraded DVD players. The studios and manufacturers may, however, refuse to supply their domestic product to such businesses. Such commercial pressure could be the reason behind www.play.com`s decision to downplay the R1 side of their business.

As far as I`m aware, the only legal restriction upon the selling imported discs in the UK is the Video Recordings Act. This effectively prevents the sale of any film that does not carry a BBFC certificate.

With regard to the reasoning behind region coding, studios often allow their films to be distributed by different companies in different territories. If everybody buys the R1 New Line edition of Blade 2, for instance, EIV will have wasted their money in purchasing exclusive rights for the film`s UK distribution.

Another reason is that if a title is released much earlier in the US, the sale of imported discs may well impede its box-office performance.

This item was edited on Tuesday, 28th January 2003, 15:57

There are many reasons given, but the real reason, as with pretty much everything else, is money. As for multi-region machines, well there are very worrying rumbles that they will be made illegal in the future. Hopefully it will never happen, but then I`m sure it`s a monetary decision so I'm still a bit uncomfortable…

They can`t stop you buying multiregion players/discs because if they tried they would be breaking international trade laws.

They can stop companies selling players that bypass CSS as it violates the dvd license agreement (violates the dvd trademark). But players that use CSS but just lie about what region they are (most multi region players) don`t break the agreement and so are legal.

Technically region coding violates international trade laws (I seem to remember the WTO confirmed this), but nothing can be done about it until a government requests action.

Aren`t they trying to work regional coding into copyright laws?

Dwight is right. The reason is so that the distributer misses out on some profit if people buy from abroad. The example given was good as New Line films are normally distributed by Entertainment over here. I think most people wrongly assume that films are always distributed by the same people both here and across the pond, but that is simply not the case. This is also a key reason to why we sometimes have to wait a while for a film to get released here apart from the fact that stars cannot be in two places at once to promote a new film. Obviously, whoever distributes the movie here wants to make money and that is why we have region coding. When VHS was dominating the problem wasn`t there, because the Internet was not widespread for easy ordering of movies and also it is only in the last few years that VCR`s and TV`s have been made NTSC compatible.

The electronics companies make there players hackable, possibly as an extra feature to make you buy it; although IMO most prospective buyers are probably not knowledgable about stuff like region coding or interested in buying region 1 discs from the web. I think Sony don`t make there players hackable, because they are also involved in film making, and besides that with Sony being a multinational with a massive advertising budget they know that many customer`s will suffer from the needing to have the big name syndrome - probably the same people who bullied their mom`s into buying them the most expensive Nike trainers all the time when they were at school!

To be perfectly honest though, Entertainment in Video have no one else to blame but themselves ;) If they could actually produce a disc with the same, or at least a similar level of content to the New Line originals, packaged in something that doesn`t look like a full page ad from the Sunday Sport, then I`d by a few more R2 titles.

Actually, I probably have twice as many R2 as other regions, but that`s only because of sales and "retail therapy".

I`m not sure I agree with the "big name syndrome" thing though. Sony make quality players, and that`s what sells them. On a related note, I also believe there is at least one Sony player that can be hacked (DVP-S525D).

Many r2 titles are also r4 encoded and many r4 are also r2 encoded so why didn`t they just make Australia and New Zealand part of region 2