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DVD regions and legality

Kookamoor

Kookamoor

New Member
So I was doing a search and stumbled upon this old thread and it got me thinking. Particularly after reading Darren's post (see below). I felt it was better to start a new thread as this is not consistent with the subject of the original thread.

Darren said:
When DVDs were introduced, they were made with the ability to encode the digital data. Hollywood insisted that different areas of the world have different regions so that they could regulate when films were introduced.

Traditionally, North America gets the release several months before Europe and Australasia. The film viewed in the European cinema has already been viewed in the USA. It is washed and then flown over to Europe for distribution in our cinemas - keeps the costs down. It would be no good if the film was on DVD in America and at the Cinemas in Europe. People would buy the film from America rather than watch it in the cinema and the film companies would lose money. So the world was carved up into regions:-

0 No Region Coding
1 United States of America, Canada
2 Europe, including France, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, Japan and South Africa
3 Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Borneo and Indonesia
4 Australia and New Zealand, Mexico, the Carribean, and South America
5 India, Africa, Russia and former USSR countries
6 Peoples Republic of China
7 Unused
8 Airlines/Cruise Ships

If you buy a DVD player, it is supposed to only play DVDs available in your zone. However, you can buy "chipped" players capable of playing all zones. I've got a chipped player so can watch DVDs from any county in the world Great for a film buff like me.
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'Multizone' DVD players are very common in Australia. They just need to be coded by the retailer, or at least that was what happened when I bought one in 2003. But it seems that is not the case here in Canada. I have Australian DVDs (zone 4) that I have been completely unable to play here, and unable to find out if there was some way to code my Sony DVD player to do this. In fact, when I called Sony I was expressly told I couldn't do this, despite the fact that the 'Multizone' player back in Oz is also a Sony. This makes me wonder: is a 'multizone' DVD player illegal? Or perhaps only in certain places? It seems quite acceptable in Oz, and I believe most DVD ads say 'multizone' on them, so it's not under the table.

Secondly, most new VHS players in Australia offer both NTSC (North American format) and PAL (Europe/Australia format) formats for playing tapes. Our new Canadian VCR, however, does not.

It seems odd that formats can be interchanged on one side of the world and yet hard to come by over here. Has anyone else had similar experiences?
 
Well i dont know about the legality in it, but its possible to unlock DVD-players. Some models are harder than others, but the possibility is there.
 
Well, I don't know if it's legal or not in the US. But it's very easy to buy a zone free dvd player over the internet. That's what I did.
 
They are fairly common in the UK now - a few years ago you had to buy one from the internet but we purchased a new one over the summer from a large retail chain. Some of the movies I buy are only availiable in region 1 format, or the region 1 dvds contain more material.
 
I am glad that you are bringing this subject up, as I have been wondering about this. I want to buy a dvd sold from an american company, its the idiot by Dostoevsky and I have made a thread asking for advice if I would be able to see it or not.

Now I have a yoga dvd bought from a british firm. The dvd is NTSC. I had to download a dvd decoder before I could see it.

Do any of you know if I now, would be able to see other films? Films bought in the usa. The film "The idiot" does say its NTSC, but it costs a lot of money and I dont want to buy it and not being able to see it.

Flower
 
Check out videohelp.com for lotsa info on this. They have lists of what players are hackable and which one's aren't. I've got a cheap Daewoo player that I did a remote hack on to play Pal/Region 2&3 discs.
 
"Hack" makes it sound illegal, though. As I said, I bought my player decoded from a very reputable chain electronics store back in Australia. Why have 'hacks' if it's actually legal?
 
It would make too much sense to make all players all region and pal/ntsc playable. I mean, it's not like the companies want what's best for the consumers. They just want to make the most money out of us as they can.
 
lenny nero said:
It would make too much sense to make all players all region and pal/ntsc playable. I mean, it's not like the companies want what's best for the consumers. They just want to make the most money out of us as they can.
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I can kind of understand the inital reasoning for this - it was to ensure that films released in the US on DVD but not yet released into theatres in other countries, could not be accessed by people purchasing the DVD abroad. This probably made a fair bit of sense at the time.

I'm not sure this policy is still valid, however, as the market seems to be becoming a lot more global every year. Personally I find the whole thing insulting, because it assumes anyone wanting to play a movie out of their zone is a crook, when that is not the case at all.
 
Here in New Zealand basically all DVD players that are available can play various different zones. Only the really cheap DVD players don't include a feature that enables you to watch DVDs from the US or UK.
 
It's very easy and perfectly legal to get into the factory settings on just about any DVD player on the market nowadays and change it to include all regions.

I recently did this with mine, a £30 DVD player from Tesco, so that I could watch some American Region 1 DVDs I had bought from amazon.

If anyone would like me to tell them how to do this just tell me the make and model number of your DVD player and I'll tell you what to press to make yuor player multiregion. :)
 
According to a ton of websites
You are legally allowed to own a Code free DVD player, but you can not use it for illegal purposes. Please check your State and Federal copyright laws for details.
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"illegal purposes" probably means copying foreign unreleased films and reselling them? I don't feel like looking up laws.

I am just guessing that these laws were brought to court by US film makers to stop pirating in other nations. I doubt the focus of this concern would be in Canada since films are released there soon after they are released in the US. For that reason the market for code-free dvd players is small in the US and Canada and you don't see them in stores very often.

Anyway, Kookamoor. As they say "you are legally allowed to own a Code free dvd player." As long as you are not doing something illegal with it you have nothing to fear. Besides, this is the kind-of minor law people are too busy to care about anyway.
 
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