Blu-ray vs. HD DVD: a Solution Abroad
Some Movies Are Available
In Opposing Format Overseas;
Turn Off the French Dubbing
By SARAH MCBRIDE
October 18, 2007; Page D1
online.wsj.com
Some savvy consumers are looking overseas for a way to take some of the risk out of buying a next-generation DVD player.
Many movie lovers have repeatedly said they are reluctant to buy one of the new high-definition movie players because of a format war pitting two incompatible technologies against each other. As the battle has unfolded, some studios have made deals to exclusively distribute their titles in one format or the other. Sony Pictures, for example, releases high-definition titles only in the Blu-ray format, which parent Sony Corp. developed. General Electric Co.'s Universal Pictures, on the other hand, releases high-definition movies only in the rival HD DVD format.
A number of high-definition DVDs like these -- that are available only on Blu-ray in the U.S. or that won't come out on HD DVD for months -- are readily available overseas in HD DVD.
Clever movie buffs have discovered a workaround: Several dozen titles out in the U.S. exclusively on Blu-ray are available overseas on HD DVD. While studios like Sony, News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney Co. tout their unswerving allegiance to Blu-ray stateside, in other countries titles like Sony's "xXx," Fox's "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" and Disney's "The Prestige" are available on HD DVD.
No overseas travel is necessary to tap into this stream of alternative discs. A visit to a site like amazon.co.uk does the trick, albeit typically at a higher price than in the U.S. For those reluctant to pay shipping costs from Europe or Asia or worried about currency conversions, gray-market U.S.-based sites such as xploitedcinema.com offer selections.
The loophole lies in distribution. Studios often farm out DVD sales in other countries to a patchwork of companies with expertise in those markets. Those partner companies sometimes have arrangements to use a high-definition format different from that of the U.S. studio.
Often, a studio co-produces movies with a partner that retains rights for distribution in certain parts of the world. Take the Sharon Stone classic "Basic Instinct." One of Sony TriStar's co-producers was the French company Canal Plus, an HD DVD backer. Buy a French version of the DVD, turn off the dubbing, et voilà -- an HD DVD version of a movie that is available only on Blu-ray in this country.
For regular DVDs, studio restrictions known as region codes typically make a disc purchased in one part of the world unplayable on a DVD player purchased elsewhere. Region codes (meant to protect varying release schedules in different countries) have become less important in recent years, however, and HD DVD doesn't have region codes, although Blu-ray does.
Some titles that come out exclusively on HD DVD in the U.S. come out on Blu-ray overseas, such as Universal Pictures' "Bruce Almighty" and "Hollywoodland," but consumers must be sure they are buying from a region that works with U.S. players. For Blu-ray, the U.S. is in the same region as almost all of the Americas and Southeast Asia.
Still, most major high-definition titles available overseas seem to reflect a switch to HD DVD, rather than the reverse.
It is too soon to say whether the availability of films from overseas will give a decisive edge to HD DVD, since relatively few consumers are tapping that market regularly. "This odd dichotomy only helps reinforce the idea that the high-def market is still in its relative infancy," says Paul Erickson, director of DVD and HD market research at NPD Group's DisplaySearch, an industry research company. "The studios themselves are still watching, waiting and evaluating the market." The number of titles exclusive to a format, after overseas releases are factored in, is only about 190 each, he says.
"It's too early to tell" if imports will give one format an advantage over the other, says a spokesman for the HD DVD Promotional Group. "The Blu-ray Disc Association does not think any format should count on a grey-market channel," a spokesman for Blu-ray says.
Buying DVDs from overseas is generally legal. "Anyone can lawfully purchase a single copy of a DVD from outside the U.S. if it is for private use and not for distribution," says Owen Sloane, an entertainment lawyer at Berger Kahn in Los Angeles. However, setting up a business based in the U.S. that sells these imports "would be illegal from the get-go," says Paul Supnik, a copyright and trademark lawyer in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Xploitedcinema.com, which offers a selection of horror and art-house films, as well as foreign DVDs, did not respond to requests for comment.
To some, the availability of Blu-ray studios' movies on HD DVD overseas is ironic, given the adulation with which the Blu-ray-only studios tout their favored technology. When Fox committed to the format, for example, it called Blu-ray a "superior" high-definition technology. On its Web site, Disney says Blu-ray offers "unsurpassed picture and audio quality." Sony says Blu-ray delivers "The Best Picture. The Best Sound."
Adam Gregorich, a system administrator at AT&T in Brier, Wash., who has bought a few of the imports, says he was surprised last year when he first heard about the loophole, but he realized studios need to sell whatever works best for them. "It's just business," he says.
Some studios point out that the overseas rights for many of these movies were negotiated years before Blu-ray and HD DVD existed. The situation is part of "making movies in the 21st century," says a spokesman for Fox, who adds the studio remains firmly in the Blu-ray camp. "These movies are co-productions or domestic-distribution deals only, and, as a result, we do not have distribution rights in all of the foreign territories," says a spokesman for Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Disney's DVD arm. "As you know, this is very common in our industry."
A Sony spokeswoman called foreign non-Blu-ray DVDs "anomalies, since the vast majority of our split-rights titles around the world will release on Blu-ray."
Sometimes, consumers can land high-definition DVDs weeks or months before they come out in the U.S. by buying overseas. For example, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," a Fox title, won't come out on Blu-ray here until December, with a suggested price of $39.98. In Poland, it is already available on HD DVD.
The Polish Web site edvd.pl sells it for 109.99 zlotys, or about $42, but navigating the site is a bit of a challenge for non-Polish speakers. Xploitedcinema.com sells it for $39.95.
Browsing an online forum for high-definition fans last autumn, Tim Glover, a youth counselor in Monroe, La., noticed that "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was available on HD DVD in the United Kingdom. In the U.S., it is available in regular DVD, but it isn't coming out on either Blu-ray or HD DVD until December. "I thought, 'Oh, man, I don't want to wait," he recalls, and ordered it from amazon.co.uk. Pleased with the quality, he has bought a few more imports, mostly from xploitedcinema.com. "There's something about having something that's hard to get," he says.
Write to Sarah McBride at sarah.mcbride@wsj.com |
