willb3d reports us that last week Blockbuster Video has called on the movie studios to eliminate region codes on DVDs to combat piracy. As most of our readers will know, when it comes to viewing DVDs, the world is divided into different zones. This means that, for instance, you cannot watch an American DVD in Europe and vice versa (provided of course that your player is not region free).
One of the reasons why the movie studios set-up this system is that movies are released at different times in different regions. So when a movie is released on DVD in America it, for instance, still has to go into cinema's across Europe. This of course prevents people from different regions watching movies that have not been released yet in their own country.
One of the problems here is that pirates take advantage of this. Pirates can remove the region lock and release a movie that's unrestricted, often months before the official product hits the stores in other regions. Another problem is that in a lot of countries you can buy DVD players that are modded to play all region DVDs. This of course makes the region system completely useless:
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Travis"s comments represent the first time the giant retailer has spokenout publicly on the controversial issue of regional coding. The system, set up at the time DVD was launched, is meant to prevent discs released in the U.S. from playing on decks sold in other territories, where release dates often trail the U.S. by several months. "Pirates take advantage of this and can drive the proverbial cart and horses through these holes in the release schedule, and the loss of revenue hurts us all--studios, distribution and retailers," Travis said. By agreement between the studios and hardware makers, all DVD players are supposed to contain circuitry to recognize and respond to region codes included on the discs. In many international territories, however, players are widely sold with the circuitry disabled or never included in the first place. "Some of the DVD product for release in the U.S. is being directly sourced by placing orders on e-commerce sites," Travis said. "As a result, while the studios strictly comply with the regional coding, the DVD hardware manufacturers and retailers often don't, and at least in Latin America, Europe and Asia, they are selling multi-region hardware units." |
Source: Video Business Online
