Finally the industry may just have seen sense with the news from Engadget that HD-DVD may not have any region coding!
The “DVD Forum Japan Conference 2005” is being held in Japan today…But one statement from Toshiba Digital Media Networks’ Hisashi Yamada was particularly intriguing: “We’ve gotten a variety of opinions about region controls. Even in the Steering Committee, they are extremely unpopular; we decided to not put them in. HD DVD probably won’t contain any region playback controls.”
Oh lord, please let that be true. When I bought my DVD player (£800 at the time!) I searched long and hard for someone who could chip it, and chip it safely. Not only that I also paid some extra to make sure it was removable should it need to be returned for repair to the manufacturer.
Wouldn’t it be great for us in the UK and parts of Europe to branch out and buy our DVD’s from places like Canada where they are so much cheaper, or for any of us to go to the home of boxsets and cool releases, the Asian market, and not worry about them not playing?
Reality break for a moment though…there’s not a chance this is going to be removed, the region coding is a huge earner for the industry, I just can’t see it. Can you?
