Yet
another reason that customers might decide to pass on the next
generation of optical storage, is the strong possibility of region coding. In
this report from the Register, they are indicating that there is a possibility
it will come someday. This is all the format needs right now, more controls and
restrictions. According to the report the DVD Forum has met and decided
to put together a team to create a region coding scheme for HD-DVD.
At the moment, HD-DVD media and players lack the
ability to enforce region coding. Which is a way to prevent discs bought in one
country from playing in another. It is quite an annoyance and many players have
secret menus if you press the right buttons on your remote to defeat it. In
addition, other players that possibly come from Asia will not incorporate the
"feature."
However, if the customer base adopts these newer
discs, this may not be so easy to work around again.
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The report goes on to say that Blu-ray is of course, not going to be
left out of the party as they are catering to Hollywood as well. It has
been widely reported that they have been tinkering away at a similar scheme
for their high tech discs. In their scenario, they will pare down the
existing 7 zones that were used for DVD, to 3.
Source: The Register
