WW & LOTR

The following may be of interest to you and could clear up some of the mysteries surrounding this subject.

Fist of all, the Hollywood film studios have split the world into eight distinct DVD regions, each regions DVD players are not allowed to play other regions DVD film releases. This allows the films studios to say when and where in the world a DVD film can be released, just like they can with cinema releases.

To keep this post brief, I will limit myself to the first four (well, 5 actually) regions only, as you can see from the screen print.

Region 0 DVDs can be purchased and played on any compatible equipment anywhere in the world, however R0 DVDs are mainly music videos. There are some main stream films released on R0 but these DVDs have a tendency to be heavily censored.

Region 1 DVDs and films are usually released in the US anywhere from 1 to 12 months before being officially released in the rest of the world. This has a curious knock on effect in that multi-regional DVD players are not very popular in the US, whereas in the rest of the world they are the DVD players of choice.

An example of this, in 2002 when Spiderman 1 DVD came out I was able to buy my region 1 copy a whole month before the official UK region 2 copy was available.

As you can imagine, I own a multi-regional player and I did my research before I made my purchase, this is what I found out:

a) Some region 1 DVD films are released before the same film gets it’s official UK cinema release.
b) Some US films do not get a UK release, they are unable to find a UK distributor.
c) Some UK DVD releases have additional censor or distributor cuts made to them, e.g. Raiders of the Lost Ark.
d) Some region 3 DVD films are released before the same film gets it’s official UK cinema release, e.g. Kung Fu Hustle
e) Region 3 and some region 4 DVD releases are cheaper than the equivalent region 2 copy of the same film.
f) Most region 3 films have the same release date as region 1.
g) I would be getting the ability to play any DVD film made for any of the main regions of the world.

I would like to add that the savings I have made on purchasing R3 & R4 DVDs has more than paid for the extra cost of purchasing a multi-regional player which, at the time, cost £50.00 more than the equivalent R2 only player.

Finally, I don’t know about Australia but here in the UK our main electrical and high street stores are not allowed to sell multi-regional DVD players, they can only be purchased from specialist shops or via the internet.





UK Bob

The BPI, the UK equivalent of the RIAA and MPAA rolled into one, has tried and failed twice to stop UK citizens from buying non-region 2 DVDs by going after the internet companies that sell DVDs sourced from around the world. So far our British courts have thrown out both stupid cases.

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