|
|
|
|
|||||
|
||||||
From: Ean Kingston (no email)
Date: Tue Nov 09 2004 - 17:27:17 EST
wrote:
> In a message dated 11/1/2004 5:13:24 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> writes:
> We've been building a library for cruising for a bit now and had no idea
> DVD's were restricted this way.
>
> Could someone point me to a definitive www site where I can learn the ins
> and outs of all this.
>
>
> I can't give you a site but from what I can gather the movie companies
> have forced the drive manufacturers to emplyoy this system so they can
> sell more DVDs. Each drive can only play movies that are encoded for
> one area of the world. You can change this area in your drive five
> times, after that the last area chosen is permenant.
You are correct. The movie companies did force the drives to include
this restrictive behaviour. They forced it through for the US citing the
DMCA as an excuse. In other countries (most of Asia for instance) this
sort of restriction is actually illegal under local law and you can get
DVD players that will ignore the region code altogether.
In Canada the region codes may be illegal under fair use laws but nobody
has tested this theory in court (and don't trust me, I'm not a lawyer).
The DVD players that ignore region codes are also available in Canada
and Europe (though they cost more than a regionized DVD player).
Unfortunately, the DVD playing software has the region code restrictions
in it (because 1st generation DVD ROM drives didn't have it) so it is
very difficult to get a regionless DVD ROM drive.
Note, however, that the DVD playing software for Liunx (illegal in the
US) just ignores region codes.
Here is a site that explains the region codes:
http://www.portabledvdstore.com/dvdregcodex.html
Here is a site that sells regionless dvd players (these are illegal in
the US):
http://www.zonefreedvd.com/
Here is a TechTV Q&A session about it:
http://www.g4techtv.com/techtvvault/features/25363/DVD_Region_Codes_Explained.html?
___________________________________________________________________________
|| The Live-Aboard List : send a "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" request ||
|| in body of message to: ||
|