Ordinary Gweilo

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It’s not working

Mar 6, 2007

This letter (DVD Drama – subscription required) in the Sunday Morning Post caught my eye:

My family tries to abide by the laws. We buy our movies at reputable stores and buy reputable DVD players at reputable stores. Our latest purchase was an LG system from Fortress in South Horizons. We bought our latest slew of VCDs and DVDs at HMV in Central.

About 20 per cent of the discs we have bought cannot be played on our LG player. In some cases the unit displays a notice saying that the disc is not licensed for the same region as the equipment. I have also bought series such as The Sopranos over the internet that the LG player will not play, even though my previous system did.

I don’t understand how I can buy a reputable brand player from a reputable brand store, and that player won’t play a movie I bought from a reputable brand store (LG, Fortress and HMV respectively). More specifically, I don’t understand how Fortress and/or HMV can sell me such products.

I am confident I am not the only person to have experienced these problems.

HMV and Fortress should make some effort to sort this problem out. One or both are likely doing something wrong and we, your customers, are giving you our good money for no value.

Inadvertently, I and other customers like me have probably committed criminal acts in total innocence, thinking we were safe relying on reputable brands. I should point out there are more than just Fortress and HMV that could be included. Fortress and HMV are simply the biggest names involved.

GREGORY PEK, Happy Valley

This is a strange one. Actually, both HMV & Fortress are trying to help consumers by giving them more choice, but it’s very possible for people to be caught out. The villains of the piece are actually the big companies that own and distribute movies, who insisted that region codes be implemented before they graciously allowed us to buy DVDs rather than VHS tapes (or laser discs)

If you were buying equivalent products in the UK you would almost certainly get a DVD player that would only play ‘Region 2’ DVDs, and all the DVDs in HMV would be "Region 2" as well, so you probably wouldn’t notice what was going on.

By the same token, DVDs and Players sold in Hong Kong should be "Region 3" – but that was never going to work, what with China being in "Region 6" and many UK and US releases never making it to Hong Kong except with imports. Hence it is very common to find "region free" players on sale here, and it’s also easy to buy DVDs from other regions (though they should really be clearly labelled as such).

The problem is that you may not even realize that you had bought a region-free DVD player, and as Mr Pek has discovered, the catch is that if you inadvertently replace it with one that is only for "Region 3" then you won’t be able to play the DVDs you own (or buy). The DVD player is not faulty, so good luck with getting Fortress to do anything about that!

I did once take back a DVD player that refused to play DVDs from other regions, but I had specifically checked that it had this feature before purchasing, and they happily replaced it (with the same model), but I also know that not all DVD players are region-free.

According to that Wikipedia article, DVD players sold in Australia and New Zealand will also be region-free, which I didn’t know. In the UK and States it is possible to buy region-free players, but usually this means that it has either been modified or it comes from a less well-known brand made in this part of the world.

This is, of course, one of the many reasons why I have no sympathy with the big ‘entertainment’ companies when they complain about piracy. Here we have a prime example of a consumer who has purchased legitimate products from large (and reputable) retailers and yet has problems that he wouldn’t be facing if he had downloaded the movies illegally or bought pirate DVDs.

Posted in Technology

10 responses to “It’s not working”

fernando

Mar 6, 2007

When I moved to India in ’03, the Sony DVD I bought from their flagship store was region-free. A year later I picked up a Philips DVD that was region 5, but the store were “kind” enough to slip me a pieceof paper with the region-free hack code. Not that it was needed, since the code was also available with a couple of minutes of net-surfing.
My understading of the situation in Australia was the early andfast adoption of DVD meant a supply problem. It really is an example of how broken the system is that Australia is Region 4 along with Latin America. So the answer became dual region 2/4 discs, but then it was easier to just offer region-free. The big winner there is Amazon US and Australian customs who can pick off those that forget to keep their orders under the duty limits.

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henry

Mar 7, 2007

I too have just purchased a new DVD HD recorder from fortress..the guy in the shop never told us whether it was region locked, and I just found it was.
however, being a resourceful chappie, I did some rummaging around on the interweb and found out that it’s pretty easy to change the player to region free by using the handset.
FYI and this is for LG..here’s what you need to do.
1. eject the disc if there is one
2. power off the unit using the handset
3. power back on, then press “home” on the remote to get the menu up.
4. select “system setup” and scroll down until you get to the little lock icon
5. enter 0000000 (zero seven times) and it will then congratulate you on setting the system to region free.
it works too, just tried it with a region 2 disk..plays fine now, but before it just told me that it was the wrong region and wouldn’t play.
google is your friend..

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spike

Mar 7, 2007

The villains are not the movie studios. The villain is HMV for not clearly labelling the product.
There are various reasons for the region coding and if you want to be writing something that is fair, then you should discuss that as well.
Here is one two example of things that happen all the time, while I am using a specific company and title, dates are made up and this exact example may not have occurred with this specific title:
Different companies may own the rights to the same title in different parts of the world. So as one example, New Line has sold the HK rights to Lord of the Rings to Deltamac, a local HK/Taiwan distribution company. In the US, New Line chooses to release LOTD on DVD on say, May 1. But Deltamac, for whatever reason, is unable to get the film distributed theatrically in HK until March and has guaranteed the HK movie theaters a four month window, meaning they cannot release the DVD until July. HMV brings in the Region 1 disc on May 1. Deltamac loses up to half of their projected sales because they cannot release the title until July. The immediate result may be that Deltamac loses money on the title and lays off staff; longer term they may not license as many films for local distribution or less films shown theatrically because theaters not so willing to screen titles if they feel their windows won’t be protected.
Further, Deltamac may have chosen to release the title at a localized price, say $150, while HMV is selling the region 1 import at $235.
Incidentally, HD-DVDs do not have any region codes. Blu-Ray DVDs have a total of 3 region codes, compared to the 6 or 7 on standard DVDs. Certain movie studios have realized that region codes did not do what they were supposed to do and are willing to do without it but the change to the DVD specification cannot be made unless a majority of members of the DVD association agree to it.

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Chris

Mar 7, 2007

Spike,
This is about parallel imports, right? As a consumer, I want the choice to buy the UK or US version (or any other version). Yet large companies and the HK government want to stop me doing that.
Of course, I understand that the local distributor doesn’t welcome competition when he has an exclusive deal, but that’s how things are in most industries. DVDs are somewhat unique in that technology is used to try to prevent this form of “unfair” competition. A can of Coke is a can of Coke wherever it is made, so restaurants can sell Coke from another country if it’s cheaper. There is no regional encoding system to stop this happening.
Actually, I doubt that the parallel imports have much impact on local DVD sales. The HK version is almost always cheaper, and most people are willing to wait. However, if the UK or US version is better or available earlier, I think I should be allowed to buy it.
I haven’t been in HMV for ages (they shut their only NT branch a couple of years ago), but I think they do normally label discs from other regions as such. The problem may be that people don’t actually know what it means.
It’s like the iPod/iTunes DRM system – it works, but most people don’t notice it because it doesn’t prevent them listening to their music. That doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem.

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Hong Kong Phooey

Mar 7, 2007

A few of the stores, apart from Fortress and other reputable chain stores, sells DVD players which can play ALL regions. Sometimes you just have to ask the sales people there. Best yet, pick up a DVD player from the computer arcades for a few hundred bucks, these machines can play literally anything, all regions, legitimate or pirate, all formats, MP3s…..

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Private Beach

Mar 8, 2007

It’s about time Hollywood caught up with the fact that we no longer live in a pre-WTO world where people stay in one place all their lives and only buy local products from local retailers. The fact is that millions of people today move around between countries and/or make purchases across borders through the Internet. For these people, region codes are a bloody nuisance.
Region codes are not there to ensure that content creators are rewarded for their work, but to give local distributors a monopoly. If I buy a can of beans, I expect the farmer who grew the beans and the workers who canned them to get paid, but I don’t expect it be coded so only Park ‘N Shop can sell it but not Wellcome.
Americans in the USA are generally ignorant about region codes because just about every movie ever released ends up in their local video store. For those of us with minority tastes in Hong Kong, things are more complex. Many of the films I would like to view may never get a Region 3 release because the market is too small to cost-justify them. If I don’t have a region-free player and buy the Region 1 or 2 release, I won’t get to see them. And if I leave Hong Kong in the future, I still want to be able to play my DVD collection in whatever new region I move to.
Incidentally cheap China-made DVD players will often handle poorly-recorded DVDs better than more expensive Korean or other better known brands – probably because they’re calibrated to work with dodgy Chinese pirate discs!

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Private Beach

Mar 8, 2007

Incidentally the regions themselves make no sense at all – see http://dvdcity.com/dvdplayerfaq/regionmap.html. For example:
– Most of the former Soviet Union is Region 5 but Belarus and the Baltic States are Region 2.
– Japan is traditionally the main supplier of audio-visual products to East and South East Asia, but is in Region 2 rather than Region 3.
– South Africa is Region 2 but the rest of Africa is Region 5.
– China is Region 6, but its two SARs and Taiwan, which are likely to be major markets for Chinese language content, are Region 3.
In fact, the regions do not correlate at all with major language blocs (Portugal/Brazil; Spain/Latin America) which would be logical for distribution of non-English material. Furthermore, I don’t think they correlate with the PAL/NTSC/SECAM divisions either, which would also make some sort of sense. It’s all nonsense.

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spike

Mar 8, 2007

So Chris, what you’re essentially saying is that the individual or corporation that owns intellectual property should not have the right to control how it is distributed merely because you don’t want them to? I don’t understand that logic. Tell me why the owner shouldn’t be able to sell exclusive distribution rights to a territory?
Perhaps your can of beans isn’t regionally coded but your can of beans isn’t intellectual property either. If you cannot find Colgate in your local pharmacy you can find Crest and they are essentially the same product.
At any rate, some MPAA members have realized that region codes do not do what they were supposed to do and are in favor of dropping them. Some, but not all. And the DVD association will not endorse a change to the specification without a wider base of agreement.
In the interim, as is widely noted, discs from various regions are generally available globally, sometimes at different price. If the Region 1 version is available earlier, then you are allowed to buy it, because local retailers stock it.
They also stock the China version, and trust me, the China DVDs are hurting Hong Kong businesses significantly.

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Chris

Mar 8, 2007

The very fact that the DVD contains intellectual property is why I think it’s OK to buy a parallel import. If I buy a (legit) DVD anywhere in the world, royalties will be earned by whoever ultimately owns the intellectual rights. One way my money goes via a local retailer and a local distributor, another way it goes via Amazon or HMV to a UK or US entertainment company – but I’ve bought a legit DVD (or CD) and some of the money ends up with whoever owns the intellectual rights. It seems fairly unimportant who else gets a cut along the way.
If the local distributor always makes DVDs and CDs available promptly and at a reasonable price, then I think they have nothing to fear from parallel imports. For example, Deltamec seem to do a very good job selling BBC VCDs and DVDs. However, not everything is available in Hong Kong in this way, and if region codes were fully implemented I wouldn’t be able to watch some DVDs that I want to watch.
As you say, the biggest threat to the big entertainment companies is not Mr Pek and others buying Region 1 DVDs in HMV, but the far less legitimate trade in DVDs from across the border. We all know that there is nothing that can be done to stop that, and region codes simply inconvenience people who are willing to buy legit DVDs, without achieving what they are supposed to do.

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Marshmallow

Mar 15, 2007

In a way this is how the hardware manufactorers make money – they insist on agreeing a “standard” of having different regional code so that you have to buy more than one to make it work should you move around.
One thing I noticed is that the big brands like Sxxy and Panxxxxic don’t allow certain types of DVDs to be played. They call it “pirate prevention” but basically it’s the same thing. The end result? I couldn’t even play home videos I made myself on their DVD players. Instead I bought a chinese-made Sxxy look-alike instead, and it worked. Strange that.

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