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why do we have three diffferent zones on the DVD? It is stupid and annoying, and it really pisses me off. Found a great DVD last night, "The Last Waltz" which is The Band`s filmed farewell concert from 1978, with great guest artists as Bob Dylan, Neil Young and so on. But off course it had to be bloddy zone 1 just like all the Pink Panther DVD`s
So I was wondering why is it so?

Money, my friend, money.

When currencies begin to differ greatly, people will start ordering their stuff abroad. And that is not good for profits of local distributors. All in all, they're canning us. And I agree with you it is utter BS.

But there is zone free DVD players, so what is the use even if it is about money. I just dont get it, there must be more sale for universial stuff than restricted. Or are they just to dumb to really see the potential out there.
For example me and my friend would have bought a copy each of "The last Waltz had been" if it had not been for the zone crap. Instead the store missed out on the sale. bloody zone crap. it is a joke

All about the money man. They must be sure to make back all the money they make on subtitling and langage packaging I guess. I HAD a zone free DVD player before they robbed me. And I'm gonna get another one. There are quite a few movies out on DVD and even some special editions that are not available in Europe.

I'm ignorant when it comes to DVD. What is this zone thing ?

DVD is digital so basically independent of these differences in video formats. You have NTSC in the States (has to do with the number of screen lines and number of frames per second) and we have Pal. Then there is Secam in France and French oriented places. However, they have the same DVD zone.

The three zones are:
1. USA and Japan
2. Europe and most of the world
3. Australia and the LOTR lands

Basically, with a standard DVD player you buy in your country you can only view the DVD's from your own zone. But it's a fairly simple procedure to make the zone-free, so they'll play them all. But this seems to be some kind of artificial protectionism, but it's all a bit odd.

Its a way of stopping piracy.

Yeah, right!

THat's nonsense of course. CD's have no zones and the major problem nowadays is piracy of CD's not of DVD's. And they have ways of securing CD's (not very successful), so they can apply the same to DVD's. In fact, my DVD couldn't copy to VHS. That's preventing piracy. But there are DVD players legally for sal who are both zone free and chipped in such a way that you can tape to VHS.

Okeydokey then.


Is there going to be a quiz on this on friday ?

Yup. And you better pass it the first time this time.

Isn't there a chip you can put in your DVD player to make it play all zones?

Yup

The main reason (they say) is to maintain the delayed release dates in different countries.

Mosts movies are out on DVD by the time they are shown in cinemas in Europe. So they employed the regions (which there are 6 I believe) to limit DVDs to certain regions.

Hey look ! There's Raz !!

*jumps and down, waving*

Exactly. It'd put the local distributors out of work. They should just learn to synchronise the domestic and international markets. Things have changed. In the past the US would supply the largest revenue from a US movie, but now foreign sales are even a bit more than half of the entire revenue. It's just lame and old fashioned.

there's a difference in regions?
Already taken care off

I have a samsung m205. now normally it isnt region-free, but in the shop I bought it they gave me a piece of paper with a procedure to get it to play all regions (some pushing this and that button and numbers), so now I can play 'em all! which is necessary for me as I import all my anime-dvds from USA.

I just bought a bloody DVD and my mind were elsewhere and it IS NOT zone free, bloody stupid things. Usually the salesmen make you aware of those things, but off course I got one who just forgott to tell me what zones it was, and me too lazy to read about it.
Hmm seems like I got a get me a zone free one, and they are so cheap.....NOT

It is true that international markets should be more synchronised, but with things as they are it does make sense to make sure that DVD sales do not undercut film sales by being released before the film.

mine was just about 2000 NOK

2000 will buy you a crappy one

Just search the net, theres probably a way to make it region free.

any sugestion of what to search for??

no idea sorry man, never had problems with my dvd-drive on my comp
tho my PSII plays USA dvd's in black and white

it is a dvd player, not on the computer

Your just going to have to live with it.
Either that or buy a crappy one like Mah's.
Atleast his will play your DVD

never buy crappy stuff, can go to the length and connect my comp to the tv.

yep that's a solution, or get a projector and a screen and have a very nice and large screen,
did that a few times it's very cool
(my dad can hire the projectors from his job)

depends on which one you have finti
some are pushing buttons, others is giving back and let them do some programming, and in other cases... you're doomed

finti, it aint crappy at all (2999NOK btw). read some reviews of it, you get lots for the price.

it's anime, says enough

the dvd-player???

you drew a dvd-player to play your dvd's?

wwwwhat

never mind

Find your make and model of your DVD player and do a search on google.com for that and the words 'region' and 'hack'.

Keep looking and I'm sure someones found a solution.

bloddy? NOK? anime? read?

All those foreign accents can be soooo confusing sometimes.

Quite.

It's not hard to get zone-free DVD players here. I had a lovely Pioneer, but that got stolen. When the insurance money comes in, I'm gonna buy a new one.

I am gonna call them at where I bought it and ask if it can be region/zone free. There are codes you can use by pushing a numberos code on remote control to the DVD, this will able you to select region. But it can also damage your DVD if it is not set for "upgrading". Most DVD`s are though cause the same brand can be sold both in USA and in Europe

Some players can indeed play other zones by pushing some buttons simultaneously. But to have it working normally, you'll have to have it modified which is possible, but that costs some 100 euro. Quite costly that.

Called the store I bought the DVD player and they gave me the code to alter the region settings, so now I just have to see if it works. I bet it will cause it was specified for the brand I have.

Dont need no modification because this brand is at sale in the US and far east (Asia, Australia and so on) All I have to do is use the remote to decode the region settings

Excellent!

Zones? That's the dumbest thing I've ever herd, but it doesn't surprise me one bit.

In the past they had the video formats (PAL, NTSC and SECAM) to keep foreign purchase at bay. That doesn't work for digital, so they had to come up with something.