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DVD Region encoding
I noticed this years ago, but I never paid much attention to it.
Now, I'm educating myself on DVD rippers 'cuz I want to be able to put movies on the hard drive/USB stick for travel. All of them seem to mention getting around the region encoding. What is/was the purpose of this? Is it for copy protection/anti-piracy or what? All my DVD players warn me I can only change the region something like 6 times and then I'm SOL. I'm not sure, but I don't think data or audio disks have this sort of folderol on them. Who decided this was a big deal and why? |
Region encoding tries to enforce discs sold in one region may only play on players sold in the same region. It achieves two goals: 1. Prevent import of discs from cheaper countries to other countries. 2. Prevent viewing of movies from discs in regions that has not had theatrical releases (typically due to translation delays.) The goal is to line studios' and distributors' pockets.
As you may have noticed, it was broken and pretty much useless. |
The movie studios. Well, according to wikipedia, anyway. Which surprises me NOT AT ALL. I bought a region-free DVD player years back for this very reason. I've only ever had a chance to use it with region 1 (US, Canada) and region 3 (HK, South Korea), but works like a charm.
One purpose of region coding is controlling release dates. A practice of movie marketing threatened by the advent of digital home video is to release a movie to cinemas, and then for general sale, later in some countries than in others. This is common partly because releasing a movie at the same time worldwide can be prohibitively expensive. Videotapes were inherently regional since formats had to match those of the encoding system used by television stations in that particular region, such as NTSC and PAL, although from early 1990s PAL machines increasingly offered NTSC playback. DVDs are less restricted in this sense, and region coding allows movie studios to better control the global release dates of DVDs. Another purpose of region coding is to prevent release of movies that could be offensive in such regions for cultural, religious, and political reasons. Region coding helps prevent release of such films in sensitive territories. Finally, the copyright in a title may be held by different entities in different territories. Region coding enables copyright holders to (attempt to) prevent a DVD from a region from which they do not derive royalties from being played on a DVD player inside their region. Region coding attempts to dissuade importing of DVDs from one region into another. |
... or as Steve Martin said (in The Jerk?), "Ah - a profit deal, eh?"
Who'da thought? :) |
There are ways to hack the DVD burner's firmware to make it region-free (kind of like the secret menus on some DVD players) so you do not get that pop-up. It might be limited to certain DVD drives.
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Originally Posted by pseudoswede
(Post 25026736)
There are ways to hack the DVD burner's firmware to make it region-free (kind of like the secret menus on some DVD players) so you do not get that pop-up. It might be limited to certain DVD drives.
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emphasis on last part quoted by ogobluetwo
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People still use DVD drive now a days?
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