june gloom on 3/3/2009 at 00:39
Missed opportunity there!
Scots Taffer on 3/3/2009 at 00:53
Capitalising on missed opportunities is how I make my daily bread.
greypatch3 on 3/3/2009 at 04:09
Getting back to the various formats, when I finally decided to get a PS3, I was really hoping Blu would win. By that point, I figured it would, too: Paramount had just decided to go completely HD-DVD a few months earlier and had released Transformers, and they figured that with that title alone, and the "pron" industry behind them, they couldn't lose.
But from all the studios I saw supporting each format, it was more like Paramount had stalled Blu as opposed to making in-roads; before they decided on one format, pretty much only Universal was HD-DVD only (and I congratulate them for standing up for themselves until the war was over; they did stick to their guns). But when Warner went Blu, the court went firmly back into Blu's court; with the New Line cinema catalog on their side, and Transformers being the only title that was really selling well at that point, it didn't really spell things well.
But as for the movies: the first one I got on Blu was Blade Runner. On the one hand, I get angry watching the movie because, really, not that much happens in it. On the other, the movie is just so damn beautiful and I love the music that I can't get angry about that fact. Since then, I can't go back to DVD; even the heavily DNR'd ones (including Sleepy Hollow, it looks terrible) look better than DVDs to me. Yes, T1 is an exception (and I'm not really as big a fan of T2 as I used to be; the effects are still awesome, but the dialogue and some of the plot contrivances make me laugh now), but head to head against most of the DVDs I own it isn't even close. I think now they're getting it through their skulls that it's worth spending a little extra time cleaning these things up and making them look better.
The main thing about Universal being HD-DVD for so long is that some of the movies I really want are taking their sweet time to be released: yes, I'm going to get flak for this, but where is Van Helsing, dammit? The DVD looks HORRIBLE upscaled. On the other hand, all of their catalog Blu releases so far have been stunning. The Mummy, Mummy Returns, The Thing...all fantastic.
Stitch on 3/3/2009 at 04:28
Thursday, probably around 2 PM.
Thirith on 3/3/2009 at 05:46
Quote Posted by Jenesis
Are you actually in Switzerland, as your location suggests? If you're going to get a region-free player anywhere, surely it's going to be there. One of the best things about the second-hand laptop my uncle gave me at Christmas is that, being Swiss, it automatically came with a region-free DVD player.
DVDs, sure. I've had a code-free DVD player since, let's see, 2000. But Blu-ray seems to be a different kettle of fish. I know that most of them can be set to play DVDs from any region, but it's the new format I'm wondering about.
greypatch3 on 3/3/2009 at 06:05
I think Blu-Ray is set up along the same guidelines as DVD...i.e., if you live in Region 1 DVD, you are Region 1 Blu-Ray. So, if you are open region, you should be able to get open region stuff. But, with the current price tag, 'should' probably doesn't cut it.
Scots Taffer on 3/3/2009 at 06:09
Regions are a bit wider in scope, which is good.
june gloom on 3/3/2009 at 07:15
Region A includes America and South/East Asia?
That will either stem piracy or exacerbate it.
Kolya on 3/3/2009 at 07:15
Quote Posted by Scots Taffer
Regions are a bit wider in scope, which is good.
That's like saying the shit pile you stepped in is of a slightly less sticky texture.
Quote Posted by Cory Doctorow -Content
The keys to decrypt a DVD are controlled by an org called DVD-CCA, and they have a bunch of licensing requirements for anyone who gets a key from them. Among these is something called region-coding: if you buy a DVD in France, it'll have a flag set that says, "I am a European DVD." Bring that DVD to America and your DVD player will compare the flag to its list of permitted regions, and if they don't match, it will tell you that it's not allowed to play your disc.
Remember: there is no copyright that says that an author gets to do this. When we wrote the copyright statutes and granted authors the right to control display, performance, duplication, derivative works, and so forth, we didn't leave out "geography" by accident. That was on-purpose.
So when your French DVD won't play in America, that's not because it'd be illegal to do so: it's because the studios have invented a business-model and then invented a copyright law to prop it up. The DVD is your property and so is the DVD player, but if you break the region-coding on your disc, you're going to run afoul of anticircumvention.
(
http://craphound.com/content/Cory_Doctorow_-_Content.xhtml#section_2)
Fafhrd on 3/3/2009 at 08:13
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Region A includes America
and South/East Asia?
That will either stem piracy or exacerbate it.
It's because they're both NTSC regions (HD content doesn't use PAL or NTSC anymore, but in the case of crazy people using HD players on non-HD displays, it's easier). Console games tend to be coded for NA/Asia and Europe/Rest of the World, too.
