Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: multi region DVD players/importing issues?

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Posted by Brad Haven (Member # 954) on 02-05-2003, 06:48 AM:

I was just wondering if multi region DVD players are available to buy in other countries?
When i bought my multi region player (pioneer 535) in 99, i was told that they will no longer be sold to limit importing, from 2000 on (bullshit?), i have since seen the odd higher end player advertised as multi region though.
I could imagine them being popular in europe and down under as american DVD's are often available well before the aussie release and sometimes even before cinema release and european arthouse DVD's are quite popular here, being PAL.
I believe that playstation can play multi region(?) but i'm more interested on the stand alone players.
Any thoughts or answers? [beer]

On a related note, my local video store is quite agressive in importing arthouse video and DVD's (from england mostly) and working in the local arthouse i have quite often found titles on their shelves that are about to screen at our cinemas, i have spoken to the video store manager and he says that he's in business to make a profit and it's unfortunate! he has said that in future he will pull them from the shelf a week before it's cinema release, i have tried to communicate to him that the damage would have already been done, but he just shruggs his shoulders [Mad]

note my GM and various distributers are aware and are waiting to see if they continue!
Does anyone else have a video store with a similiar policy?
thanks
brad [Smile]

Posted by David Rigby (Member # 1301) on 02-05-2003, 07:00 AM:

I know of a nightclub that used to regularly screen movies before their cinema release by buying import DVDs (Pitch Black springs to mind). I asked the owner how he felt about the legal issues and his response was '...well I don't charge to see the film so they (the distros) can't do anything' - never mind that he advertised the screenings on a billboard outside and so was directly improving his takings as a result!! He wouldn't be told. Don't know if this still goes on; I suspect not - I haven't seen anything advertised lately. The irony is that it was the WORST possible way to see anything - a friend went to the PB screening and said it was shown on teeny TV ceiling mounted TV monitors that you could hardly see and you couldn't hear the sound for all the noise (it was packed apparently). I had to say 'I told you so'!

BTW Multi region DVD players are extremely common here - and cheap - mine cost £120 and that was 14 months ago.

David

Posted by Mike Rendall (Member # 1499) on 02-05-2003, 07:36 AM:

In the UK multi-region DVD players are more-or-less the norm if you look at retailers like Richer Sounds. Most supposedly region fixed DVD players actually have a hack that can make them multiregion if you look on the right websites.

Posted by Matthew Peters (Member # 1495) on 02-05-2003, 08:06 AM:

Brad if anything the availability of multi region DVD players have increased, among some of the overrated features like “getting rid of those annoying black bars [thumbsdown]

” the retailers seem to advertise and promote multi region compatibility. Seems the idea of region zoning to prevent the viewing of a presentation prior to its theatrical release is not effective as is the supposed analogue copy protection (macro vision) eg. Copy to VHS. And as for the PDC’s and CSS it was only a matter of time before someone worked it out.

My pic still hasn't been updated [Frown]

, oh well

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-05-2003, 08:16 AM:

Brad: your video shop which imports titles from abroad and rents them is probably breaking the law. When a studio sells retail video distribution rights to a company it does so for a specific country or countries only. Sometimes it will sell rights for different countries to different video labels. The copyright notice on the DVD will probably state that permission is granted for screening in private homes in the UK only. They're probably not even cleared for rental in the UK, let alone abroad.

If the studio has already licensed the film to an Australian video label for release once the cinema run is over, it will be more than a little off-pissed if it finds out that video outlets are already renting what are, in effect, pirate copies. If this place is really hitting your business and you don't like the guy, I would start tipping some studios off. If he starts getting nasty lawyer's letters he'll probably come round to your way of thinking.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-05-2003, 08:36 AM:

Showing unlicensed consumer video copies publicly (even if admission is not being charged) is a form of "piracy", hurting legitimate theatrical exhibition. Contact the MPAA or the distributor for that feature with the details, so they can prosecute.

http://www.mpaa.org/anti-piracy/index.htm

http://www.mpaa.org/about/index.htm

http://www.mpaa.org/relatedsites/index.htm

http://www.filmjournal.com/applications/guides/alpha.cfm?PageID=11111130

Posted by Brad Haven (Member # 954) on 02-05-2003, 09:27 AM:

Thanks for the replies!
It makes me wonder why they continue with of charade of region coding?
Matthew said : Brad if anything the availability of multi region DVD players have increased.
It's been a little while since i've been window shopping, i tend to find myself buying something if i window shop too often [Frown]

, so i've only been going by sales leaflets.

With the video store issue, we have a cross promotion thing going with them (we show their slide/they have a film poster display for us) [Confused]

so it's an odd/sensitive issue! Now that my relationship has soured with the manager, if it happens again i wont hesitate on contacting the GM.
THANKS
BRAD [Smile]

Posted by Joe Beres (Member # 678) on 02-05-2003, 09:51 AM:

Brad,
Here in the states, stores do not sell multiregion players off their shelves. However, if you know what to look for, you can buy a DVD player for which a firmware "upgrade" is available on the internet. It is getting more difficult to find players in which the upgrade disables macrovision, but one can often get around the region coding fairly easily. It seems that it is usually the cheaper and/or no name players that have this capability, but I am impressed and happy with the quality that my $60 player uts out. I can't disable macrovision, but that isn't really an issue for me. I really just want to be able to see dvds that aren't available here. The region coding is disabled, and it will even convert PAL to NTSC. It does all that I want it to do, and does it quite well.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-05-2003, 10:21 AM:

A lot of PC DVD playback software ignores region coding anyway, and as for Macrovision, software which sticks two fingers up at it is readily available, e.g. DVD Decrypter. Like the self-destructing DVD mentioned in another thread, Macrovision will stop a technically illiterate consumer from hooking up his or her VHS and DVD players and pressing the buttons, but does bugger all to prevent organised piracy.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-05-2003, 10:25 AM:

Macrovision can be easily defeated with a time-base corrector. Neither it nor region coding will do anything to stop professional pirates from stealing the content off of a DVD.

I believe that DVD licencees (the equipment manufacturers) are required as a condition of the license agreement to obey the regional coding scheme, but that doesn't stop "modified" players from being sold by third parties.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 02-05-2003, 10:31 AM:

Matthew, follow the directions in the FAQ and you might have some luck. [Smile]

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 02-05-2003, 10:43 AM:

I'm not sure how the law treats the import of videos that were legitimately purchased elsewhere. I believe that the First Sale doctrine is what allows video rentals to take place in the first place without further compensation to or specific permission of the rights. holders. But if that extends to imports I don't know.

I thought there was some country...Australia or NZ come to mind...that required DVD players to handle all regions.

I'm rather curious what if anything would prevent the rental of audio CD's. I recall hearing of some place years ago where they would rent you a CD and time in a stereo equipped cubicle ostensibly to listen to it but as there was a tape deck present the inference was that the customer would run off their own copy. This was before CD/R's. They were shut down. (I don't recall if it was in the USA or elsewhere.) But if it is legal to rent DVD's for the person to take home then return then could not the same be done with CD's?

Posted by Brad Haven (Member # 954) on 02-05-2003, 10:57 AM:

Hi Steve,

quote:
I thought there was some country...Australia or NZ come to mind...that required DVD players to handle all regions.

Not Australia, but New Zealand is a strange place? [Smile]

In Perth and Fremantle we have a CD library (small private business) (my friend works there) where you can rent CD's and computer games (take home) either overnight and some releases weekly, in the early nineties the CD distributers got pissed off and had the rules changed, so now you can only rent CD's pre 1991(?), which is still a pretty decent deal. It's not a major industry, not that many people even know of the CD library.
CHEERS
BRAD [Smile]

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-05-2003, 11:05 AM:

In this country video rental happens on the basis of a legal agreement between the publisher (who has purchased the rights from the distributor or studio) and the rental outlet, which allows the latter to rent tapes and DVDs produced specifically for that purchase. Tapes intended for retail sale are supplied by the publishers to shops on that basis only, i.e. the agreement expressly states that they can only be sold, not rented.

Presumably if you take these retail tapes or DVDs into another country then what you can do with them is determined by the destination country's copyright (and censorship) law. In most countries I would expect that to mean that copyright subsists in the content of the tape or DVD and that commercially exploiting that content is illegal without the permission of the copyright owner.

In reality, no-one is going to worry about people exporting/importing DVDs for personal use (I've ordered loads from the US and Germany via amazon.com and amazon.de), but commercial exploitation is another matter altogether. I don't know what Australian copyright law actually says, but I'd guess that it would be illegal to rent a DVD which was originally sold by retail in the UK for domestic viewing only.

I would imagine that the same applies to CDs. My local lending library has CDs (mainly of classical music) which it rents for £1 each, so there has to be an agreement somewhere - possibly with the Performing Rights Society, which administers music copyright on behalf of its owners in the UK. But I would have thought that record companies would be very reluctant to allow commercial operators like Blockbuster to rent mainstream CD titles. It's now so easy and cheap to copy a CD (writers are built into virtually every new PC nowadays, and blank discs are virtually given away) that a rental sector would probably have a severe impact on music sales. It isn't that quick and easy to dupe a DVD, yet...

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 02-05-2003, 04:13 PM:

Actually, cheap multi-region or region-free players are readily available off-the-shelf at places like Best Buy and Radio Shack in the US. And higher-end modded players are available at specialty shops. Example: Cyberhome DVD-500 (German machine built in China) available at RS for $69 US is multi-region with defeatable Macrovision, has component and progressive scan outputs, plays PAL or NTSC without geometry errors, and has built-in DD and DTS decoders. Plays MP3s and JPEGs too. Not the greatest pictures I've ever seen, but for $69 it is a great value. At the other end of the quality scale right now, the best bang-for-the-buck seems to be the Panasonic RP-82. It sailed through the latest DVD video shootouts and can be had with region mod for around $400 US.

I would assume multi-region players are much more popular outside the US. Since the US gets Hollywood releases first, most people here don't have a desire for anything other than Region 1. But there is a small US market for multi-region players nonetheless, for folks like me who enjoy foreign films that will not likely get a US release. My Japanese DVD library for example is currently about 50% Region 2 (Japan NTSC) or Region 3 (HK/Taiwan/Korea NTSC) legitimate DVDs of Japanese films. All available through legitimate on-line foreign dealers like CD Japan and Amazon Japan, or through legitimate on-line US importers like Poker Industries in NJ or Hoteiya Las Vegas here. Though I'm sure the MPAA doesn't like it, I've never had any issues or hassles buying legitimate foreign DVDs or machines to play them on. US titles on foreign DVD may be another matter. The only US titles on foreign DVD that I have are the Japanese Region 2 DVDs of the Warner Bros Looney Tunes (three Tweety discs so far). Pristine transfers and original soundtracks sadly unavailable in the US on DVD (why WB continues to sit on their back catalog is anybody's guess).

BTW none of the stuff that I have (or would buy) is pirated, though pirated foreign stuff (mostly on VCDs) is also readily available in the US if one knows where to look.

Posted by David Favel (Member # 1125) on 02-05-2003, 07:50 PM:

Speaking from the strange place.
You can get both multi & single zone players in N.Z.
A customer of mine bought a cheap $188.00 player multi zone & all the cool xtras & he is happy with it.
The N.Z. distribution companies were argueing with the govt about a year back about video stores inporting American copies & renting them before theatrical release. Nothing much happened till Columbia sued a couple of stores. Things had settled down till a cinema started screening DVDs from his video store in his cinema. I think he is due in court soon.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 02-05-2003, 08:16 PM:

That is why some bigger movies like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter started worldwide on roughly the same day. Maybe they will adopt that practice for other movies as well, then we don`t need regional coding anymore. It is nonsense anyway.
I watch DVDs from the drive in my computer which is very silent. Now I am looking for a program to reset the region code counter to 0. I mean the counter which allows you to change region code 5 times and then locks it.

Posted by Matthew Peters (Member # 1495) on 02-06-2003, 01:05 AM:

Daryl - I have followed the instructions, Brad obviously has been busy and has not had a chance to update it. [Smile]

Scott your right about professional pirates, but I’d of thought they would want to make PDC (perfect digital copy) and not an analogue copy without macro vision. But I guess if people are willing to pay for a low contrast, cropped, bootlegged video [thumbsdown]

with the mono/background noised audio, I guess an analogue copy seems like a luxury.

A number of the models sold here in Australia are region locked and protected by macro vision, but are upgradeable without firmware or hardware. You just type in a “magic code or sequence” on the control and you can change the region or set it to all regions and disable macro vision. I’ve seen it done, you eject the tray then punch in the code and wallah it’s done.

I know of a person who has one of the older TV’s before A/V inputs were common. After buying a DVD player he connected it through his VCR so he could watch it. He was most disappointed when he saw the affects of macro vision, he complained to the store (I won’t mention which one) and they gave him code.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 02-06-2003, 09:28 PM:

Matthew, Brad's probably busy working so that he can pay for this site. [Smile]

I'm sure it will get updated the next time he processes registrations.

As for DVD players. I would expect that the majority of today's players are programmable with the remote and at the very least your handy dandy EPROM burner. It's a cost issue -- using a programmable chip is FAR more cost efficient than using a single separate chip for every region (even if that chip was to only cost 3 cents). The added manufacturing scheduling inherent in using separate chips, or even just soldering separate points on the board, would add significant cost to the process.

Posted by Paul Cassidy (Member # 951) on 02-07-2003, 04:36 PM:

Yes in NZ we have Mutli-zone by default as all Zone4 countries require to be able to pick up the different Formats in each country PAL & NTSC and Power Voltages ,so these sets have all the settings of the different countries on the DVD , all that is required for my Pioneer to switch Zones is a couple of pushes on the Remote (not a true Multi Zone ,but selectable Zone DVD)in the USA there is no need for this as all the most recent releases come from Zone1 anyway. [Wink]

Posted by Paul Cassidy (Member # 951) on 02-07-2003, 05:10 PM:

An update to David Flavel is a Newspaper release stating that the Government has decided to stop all Zone1 Parralle importing of DVDs and that they are required to wait 9mths after the Film release before they are to release the Zone1 DVDs (by this time the Zone4 will already be out) but there is no mention of this release is in the USA or NZ ???? and this is still not going to stop individuals from sourcing via the Internet , they say that they are doing this to protect the local Film and Performing Arts industry ???? sounds like the Film distributors have flexed their Muscles , the good thing to come out of the battle is that DVDs and video have been released much quicker than before , but this has affected the Second Run Cinemas as they don't have the space between First release and the start of there runs as they used to have .

Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 02-07-2003, 06:05 PM:

This website www.vcdhelp.com has a list of particular makes and models of DVD players that have hacks available to make them region free (and other goodies too).