DVD region encoding insanity
On my recent trip to London I got snagged by the 'intergrated' region encoding 'feature' on my laptop DVD drive. Let me explain:
I bought 2 DVDs in the UK which the DVD drive barfed at. No error message, warning or anything, it just didn't work. So I looked up the Matshita DVD driver (UJ-840S ATA Device) in 'Device Manager' and the general status tab told me 'This device is working properly.' Really, I thought to myself.
So clicked on the DVD Regions tab of the Properties dialogue box. It said:
"Most DVDs are encoded for play in specific regions. To play a regionalized DVD on your computer, you must set your DVD drive to play discs from that region by selecting a geographic area from the following list.
CAUTION You can change the region a limited number of times. After Changes remaining reaches zero, you cannot change the region even if you reinstall Windows or move your DVD drive to a different computer.
Changes remaining: 4
To change the current region, select a geographic area, and then click OK.
You what?? No, it's not OK. I want to watch 'genuine' DVDs that I acquired legitimately. I bought them, in a shop!
I live in the US, and I travel. I don't know about you, or the millions of other people who travel each year, but I buy stuff when I'm traveling and want to 'consume' these things wherever I happen to be - that includes food, clothes, music and yes, movies. Is that so wrong??
I don't see regional encoding warnings on the back of a t-shirt. Imagine: "You may only wear this t-shirt within the country you bought it".
I don't expect to see a message on the back of my sandwich cautioning me that "You may not eat this product outside of the UK, although the mustard came from the US, so if you are thinking of eating the sandwich there you can eat the mustard, but nothing else. Especially the lettuce. Oh, and you can only eat the mustard 4 times if you are so inclined".
I can listen to CDs anywhere, no matter where I bought them. So what's up with this DVD thing?
I admit, it didn't totally surprise me as I've previously (and knowingly) bought multi-region DVD players to play region encoded movies bought on my travels. However, I was surprised to find that PC DVD drives were subject to the same insanity. I didn't realise this.
A history of DVD copy protection' outlines the DVD Consortium's role in this debacle:
"DVDs have had the option of embedding a region code in the DVD disc. Different regions of the world were assigned different codes, and every DVD player manufacturer had to sign an agreement with the DVD Consortium stating that they would only play DVD discs of a certain region. And the manufacturers had to play by the Consortium’s rules, because the Consortium was the only one who could give out the decryption keys that would allow the player to decrypt the CSS encryption used on commercial DVDs."
What I really don't understand is the sense of the policy. I understand what the DVD Consortium is trying to do, but does this policy make sense to the law-abiding 'consumer'?
The policy leaves me with the following options as a 'consumer' who wants to watch DVDs on my laptop AND abide by the DVD Consortium's policy:
- Change to region encoding only four times during the lifespan of the DVD drive (eh, right)
- Buy DVDs from other countries but don't watch them (eh, right)
- Don't buy DVDs from other countries (eh, right)
- Buy multiple DVD drives (to cover every region). Carry these drives around with me while I travel and swap in and out of my laptop (eh, we've truly landed in Willie Wonka's fantasy chocolate factory)
Over the years, the encryption tech has gone through multiple updates due to the (successful) efforts to work around the limitations, including region encoding. So, does one become a 'naughty' consumer? What alternatives to the above are there for the sane? How about:
- Get some DVD ripping software and buy DVDs from which ever country I happen to be at and watch them whenever and wherever I want
- Er, that's all.
Gee, let me think...which should I go for?