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"Continental DiViDes"
01/04/2003 Entry
Since I purposefully don't get any TV reception at home (now you know how I have so much time to keep up with the Web), I sometimes look for taped releases of the few TV shows I do enjoy watching. I was looking around to see if West Wing was available on DVD. The searches all led me to sellers in the UK. The US Amazon site said that West Wing First Season has not yet been released. But eBay UK had several copies. When I checked the UK Amazon site I realized why location matters: Region 2 encoding (Europe, Middle East & Japan only).
I think this is yet another good example of how the use of technologies is significantly influenced by business strategies and policies. There is nothing inherent in DVDs that would make them incompatible across continents. It is a conscious decision on the part of the entertainment industry that is adding such a continental DiViDe by introducing encoding that stands in the way of cross-continental interchange.
Replies: 2 Comments have been posted, click here to see them and add your own
It is realy simple to "de-zone" DVD players (and also most DVD-rom players). My parents own a toshiba one and it is just a matter of finding a code to type on the remote control. I just found a site that explains how to do it: http://regionhacks.datatestlab.com/
And yes: the world is ruled by corporations =(
Posted by David @ 01/04/2003 03:15 PM CST
Do what I do when I don't have time for TV: read the summaries on Television without pity. They don't have all current TV shows, but they do have The West Wing.
Posted by Kara @ 01/04/2003 05:22 PM CST
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