DVD and Blu-Ray Region Coding - How is this Legal?
Harry Dutton
June 2nd, 2009
Having just purchased a new HDTV set it seemed to me that the time had come start thinking about upgrading my old DVD player. Full definition HDTV will take a lot more storage and “Blu-Ray” looks like a great idea. But for me there is a major problem.
Developing a blue semiconductor laser was a “very good trick”, but there is no “rocket science” about the idea of using blue light in a disk recording system. The principles are exactly the same as before. The red light used in a regular DVD has a wavelength of 650nm. In the last few years low cost semiconductor lasers with a wavelength of 405nm have become available. Wavelength limits the resolution of the light beam and the shorter wavelength means higher data density and therefore greater capacity. Of course, while we are in the process of inventing a new standard, changes can be made in other areas of the protocols in line with experience gained over the years with DVD and CD. Blu-Ray gives about 6 times the data capacity of DVD (around 25 GBytes) with something less than half of this improvement coming from the change in wavelength.
Gone unnoticed in the hyperbole is a “feature” called “Region Coding”. DVD’s had it too. Region Coding is a totally artificial system which has only one purpose - to restrict international trade. Players are manufactured with a “Region Code” theoretically “hardwired” into them. Disks are also encoded
with a Region Code. If you try to play a disk with a region code that is different from that of the player
then it won’t play!
It must be emphasized that Region Coding has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with preventing people from making unauthorized copies. Nor does it have anything to do with the technical standards used by the various TV systems. Most TV sets and DVD players (outside the US) will play disks of any of the common technical standards.
The idea of Region Coding is to segment the “world market” into regions so that different prices can be
charged in different regions. The Film Studio mouthpieces say that they just want to control release of new films into different regions at different times. In the world today many people travel and if they see a DVD or Blu-Ray at a good price it is perfectly reasonable that they might want to buy it and take it home to use. Region Coding prevents that. It also prevents retailers in one country from buying their disks wholesale in another country - in most countries this is a perfectly LEGAL activity. Yet another effect is that it hampers Internet retailers like “Amazon” from selling “cross-border” - another LEGAL activity.
It is critical to realize that we are talking here about legally purchased disks with all royalties
paid - these are NOT unauthorized copies!
Clearly there is only one aim here - to charge different prices in different countries according to what producers think “people can afford”.
From the manual of a popular player
In the DVD world, most DVD players adopted Region Coding and after a while dozens of sites popped up around the Internet which gave easy directions for circumvention of the system in most popular players. Usually this involved some patching of the player software - a one-time job which is easy enough to do from the remote control. Sony saw all this and just abandoned Region Coding in its players.
Enter Blu-Ray. Apparently if you want to build a Blu-Ray player you have to enter into a contract with the
Blu-Ray Disc Association that guarantees that you MUST support ALL of their “Digital Rights Management” protocols. Thus today’s Blu-Ray players enforce DVD Region Coding (when they play “regular DVDs”) as well as Region Coding for “Blu-Ray” disks.
It is true that about 70% of the Blu-Ray disks on the market are coded so that they will operate in any region. It is also true that “illegal hacks” for Blu-Ray players are becoming available from many web sites that circumvent the problem. That is not the point.
How is that a technical consortium can get together with the objective of RESTRICTING world trade and
actually put it into practice! To a simple Engineer it would seem that the restriction of trade conflicts with various “Trade Practices” laws and laws against anti-competitive practice enacted in most civilized countries.
The EU persues Microsoft and Intel for “restrictive practices” why not the “Blu-Ray Disc Association”.
For me - I am NOT buying one until I can have one that is totally Region Coding free.
Tags: Blu-ray, DVD, HDTV, region coding