DVD: TOO BUGGY, TOO COSTLY

E/Town Poll reveals reasoning of DVD bears

by the Editors of E/Town (excerpt: regional coding)

September 23, 1996 -- ...

A number of world-traveling videophiles protest against DVD's regional coding. Designed to cut down on international piracy, the system won't allow a disc pressed in one country to play in another.

"Country code locking of mass produced disks [is] highly offensive," says Benjamin Longman of Orinda, CA. "The only people who would be importing them would be (a) people planning to illegally mass produce copies, who would simply strip out the offending country locks, or (b) true fans/collectors who would be looking for different versions (ex. the U.S. version of 'Brazil' is 132 minutes long, while the original British version is 142 minutes long) but then would be unable to play the movies. This personally offends me in that I like to collect and view Japanese animation. It just once again feels like the movie industry is thumbing its nose at the consumer."

"I won't buy DVD unless they give up the country-lock and the anti-digital copy system," agrees Jacques Schrapp of Brunstatt, France. "In my opinion these two systems take away the major advantages of DVD over laserdisc. Which brings us back to VHS and laserdisc which perfectly do the job!"

"But dividing the world in five different codes is a game I do not want to join," adds R.F. Sandelowsky of Amsterdam, Holland.

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