everything like such as blah

• 1 year ago

  #rant #media #drm

  The third stupidest thing in the world is... →

  mnmal:

  DVD region encoding.

  Of course I could have bought the American DVDs, but when what? My DVD player will reject them (thanks to that specially added piece of code! Thanks!) At that stage, I had three options:

  • Hack my DVD player to remove the region-checking code. This is of course a circumvention measure, and hence illegal.
  • Make region-free copies of the DVDs and play them on my UK DVD player. This is of course a circumvention measure, and hence illegal.
  • Download ripped copies of the show. This is NOT a circumvention measure, and paradoxically may not even be illegal. I am not 100% sure on this point.

  so I downloaded a set of Season 1 videos and loved the show to bits. (I won’t go into the reasons right now, as that would take me way off topic, but one day I will.)

  But! Please! Come on, Warner Home Video, I am trying to give you my money! In exchange for watching your show! Isn’t that, oh, I don’t know, YOUR BUSINESS MODEL?

  Just had a similar experience with Top Gear. They offer the show on television (on BBC which isn’t available in Germany and I want a bloody digital version in iTunes), on the BBC iPlayer, the UK iTunes Store and a ruined synchronised version in german TV. Watching the ruined synchronised version, which by the way is 4 weeks behind, is not an option. Watching the BBC iPlayer in Germany (or any country outside of the UK) is pretty much impossible. You can get UK iTunes Store gift cards and buy the show* from there, but each episode comes out a week after it first aired. Honestly? I would more than love to buy this show from somewhere - but BBC gives me absolutely no proper way to do it. These media companies are so lost in their ridiculous digital rights management system that they don’t reach the customer at all. 

  Same applies for theatre films. They release the film in the U.S. and 2 months later in the rest of the world. And then they complain about it being pirated. Pardon? It can’t be that hard to release films everywhere at once. Get the subtitles for non-english countries ready before hand. It surely won’t solve the pirating problem but it will get the rest of the world in the theatre before a film download shows up as the number 1 Google suggestion when typing, ie. Inception.

  Not making media available to customers that are willing to pay is probably the worst (or third) thing in the world. Directly financing piracy…

  * I did buy the HD version on iTunes.