[P1] DVD region codes?

[Brian Pearce]

> Do content-providers really, truly believe the audience will buy 
> multiples
> of CDs/DVDs depending on where they want to play it?

Oh, please. That has *nothing* to do with the region coding scheme 
employed in DVDs.

You may disagree with them (and mostly this seems to be because they 
inconvenience you), but there are quite reasonable explanations for why 
the system was put into place. Apart from the different theatrical 
"windows" in place worldwide (where a DVD release in one country may 
come before the theatrical release in another), seperate distribution 
agreements may govern material in different parts of the world. (Most 
companies wouldn't want to put too much money into licensing material 
if they knew it could be easily imported and sold to their audience.) 
In fact, without region coding and encryption, I doubt the major 
studios would have embraced the DVD format at all.

They're easily circumvented without too much trouble, and it's an 
inconvenience I'm willing to live with; especially if this is the 
difference between having material released on DVD and *not* having 
material released on DVD.

Besides which, there's /already/ a system very much like region coding 
in place that has traditionally restricted the material that can be 
played in different regions without specialised equipment; incompatable 
television standards. Your friend would likely need a player capable of 
transcoding the signal from SECAM (if I'm not mistaken) to NTSC to play 
his French DVD in the US. (Most of those end up set to bypass region 
coding, anyway.)

BRIAN/bpearce at cloud9.net