Regional DVD

Ever been tempted to watch a Region 1 DVD in the UK, or maybe you ordered a Region 3 from one of those inexpensive importers from Hong Kong and are now happily viewing it in Region 2. Why shouldn’t you? Why should companies prevent users from purchasing DVDs in the global marketplace and watching them on whichever machine in whichever country they like, provided they’re not pirated? It’s ridiculous that I might be working in the US buy a couple of Region 1 DVDs to watch there, but then wish to bring them to the UK to watch again at home, only to find that this is disallowed by the license and impossible if I haven’t got a multiregion DVD player anyway.

Well, there are “hacks” all over the web that allow you to unlock many DVD players so that you can do just that. But, a new patent from Philips might soon tie the region lock code to the copy-protection encryption embedded in the DVD, which won’t physically make too much difference to users but will bring those hacks into the fold of “tampering with the copy protection system”, which comes under copyright law in the US and elsewhere.

Hacking the region on your DVD could then become a copyright infringement and land you with a $1m fine or even a jail term.

I learned of this potential new problem for global DVD users everywhere on the New Scientist inventions site and tried to follow their link to the US patent office only to be counfounded with the following error:

“The Query ( ) was unparseable (Empty search box ). A common cause of this is neglecting to enclose multi-word terms in “s. That is, if you entered safety syringe as a term, you need to use “safety syringe” instead.”

So, I redid their original search and found the actual patent here

And now, a word to the wise: Take some time to compare DVD prices and do some research on which DVD players will play which regions from which you want to watch DVDs.