"All Code" DVD players.............................................
Many sides of digital versatile disks
The New Straits Times
Mon, Feb 09 1998
THE DVD, nowadays more generally taken to mean digital video disk, also has another meaning when it encompasses computers as a form of mass storage - digital versatile disk. However, to suit its own interests, Hollywood has decreed that the incredible power of the DVD should be anything but "versatile".
The world, according to Hollywood, is divided into six regions, and DVD, with Hollywood movies recorded on them, which are released in one region are not supposed to be compatible with those from another region. The aim, apparently, is to curb piracy. All very laudable. But of course, the cost is borne by the end user.
Traditionally, films are first released in the US and Canada, which are designated as Region 1. Only several months later are they released in Europe and Japan known as Region 2.
Southeast Asia - Region 3 - is next, followed by Australia and South America, Region 4. Africa and the CIS countries are Region 5, whilst mainland China is the very last to be able to see any Hollywood films, being Region 6. (Those which are not restricted to any region are known as "all-code" disks or are designated simply as "0".)
A DVD machine you bought in Hong Kong or Singapore will not play the DVDs you later buy on the local market, say if one moves to Canada, America, Australia or Europe.
The expensive player that you have carefully shipped overseas will thus be useless except to play the disks you have bought in Southeast Asia!
Moreover, if you make a business trip to America or Europe, and think a great gift for your family would be the latest hit movie available on a DVD, you'll be more than disappointed to discover that when you get back, having paid anything up to US$40 (RM160) or more, the disk won't play on your machine back in Hong Kong or Singapore! It won't even begin to play in six months' time either when the movie has finally hit the local cinemas! Indeed, you still won't be able to view it two years later, since the coding is not "time-sensitive" but is dependent on where the DVD was intended to be sold.
Certainly, the wonderful feat of technology known as regional coding is unlikely to endear Hollywood to anyone. No one likes being dictated to, especially when it is merely to profit someone else at your expense. Not surprisingly then, the ever-able minds of the less-constrained Hong Kong entrepreneurs have found their own way around the problem.
Electrical shops in Hong Kong's Mongkok district, and some of the computer shops in places like Shamshuipo and Wanchai's "298 Computer Zone" are reported to be selling modified versions of the new Japanese-made DVD players. With the addition of a small extra circuit, the players are able to ignore the spoiler signal and break the code that prevents DVDs released in one region from being played in another! Furthermore, some Hong Kong companies, with manufacturing bases in China are reported to be producing "all-code" machines, which will play DVDs intended for any region.
Naturally, the new machines are not from the established makers (like Philips and Sony) which are members of the DVD launch committee, but by independent companies which owe nothing to Hollywood and couldn't care less about its decrees.
It is not illegal to import "Code 1" (Region 1) DVDs into Hong Kong or Singapore. And it is not (yet) illegal to play them on specially-modified, or non-standard players. Although, unless they are marked "all-code" as some disks are, short of going out and purchasing a "Code 1" machine, (as some Singaporeans are doing from parallel importers - itself of doubtful legality), there is no other way to see them all. Indeed, if it were made illegal, it would seem to be virtually unenforceable. Thus, it is not very likely to become so. However, the sale of modified or all-code machines could be made illegal. (Although recently some Hong Kong Chinese magazines have been reported running articles showing users how they can modify their DVD players themselves.)
Meanwhile, dealers point out that, at most, their "modified" players may have broken the maker's warranty agreement. However, in the case of those specifically-made as "all-code" machines, if and when they do become available, the warranty is clearly not in jeopardy. And the law of the marketplace indicates that probably "all-code" machines, whether made that way, or modified by dealers, will ultimately win out, especially as it will mean that DVDs produced in any country, and by any company, can be imported into Hong Kong.
Even those DVDs made by companies in Japan, India or France which might feel that, with DVD mastering costing US$10,000 or more per disk, it would not be worthwhile making several different versions of some movies just to sell a few thousand DVDs outside their own region.
On the other hand, just to be on the safe side, perhaps you'd better pop down to the local electrical shop and get an "all-codes playable" DVD player now before someone, somewhere, decides that at least the machines are illegal, and a new twist to Hong Kong's familiar "piracy raids" starts.
The advantage of DVDs is that, for viewing movies, they offer phenomenal quality, even better than laser disks - much like watching high-definition television, or a 35-millimetre movie projected directly onto the back of the TV screen, or computer monitor. While a video compact disk (VCD), which is considerably inferior in visual quality can be played on a DVD player, the reverse is not true.
DVDs have other advantages over VCDs or VHS tapes. Apart from five- channel, 16-bit Dolby digital stereo surround sound with super bass (since they use digital video compression), they can, for instance, show a scene from up to five different angles.
One Japanese DVD, for instance, shows a train journey along the famous Kuomi Line, looking directly ahead, and also from 45 and 90 degrees left and right. Up to eight different (languages) soundtracks can be put on the same DVD, along with up to 32 different language subtitles as well as captioning for the hearing impaired - all of them selectable by the viewer. And while some movies are available in the normal TV-style 4:3 aspect ratio, others can be seen in the 16:9 "letterbox" style, or viewed in the high-definition TV format. In some cases, this just means putting the disk in the other way up, to read the other side.
DVDs will, ultimately, come in four different "flavours", or formats, offering differing amounts of storage. Initially, DVDs provided single- sided and single-layered movies for a total of 4.7 gigabytes (GB) - the equivalent of more than seven CDs. For reasons not too hard to guess, these are known as DVD5. Later, a second programme will be able to be replayed from digital information contained in a sub-layer just microns below the first, and so DVD9 disks will be single-sided and double- layered.
Next, double-sided disks will become available, affording twice the amount of storage as single-sided, single-layered disks - to be known as DVD10.
Finally, DVD18, double-sided, double-layered disks will provide the most storage of all - almost 18GB of it, enough for 480 minutes of (motion picture experts group (MPEG) 2 compressed video storage. With plenty of storage space, not only can DVDs have five different camera views, eight languages, and 32 different subtitles, they may also feature interactive menus, production notes, cast and crew bios, teasers and trailers.
But this is still only the start. DVD movies are stored on what is known as DVD read only memory (ROM), meaning they can only be "read" or replayed.
But in the not-too-distant future, computer users will be able to save their data on inexpensive, rewritable, DVD random access memory (RAM). Like massive floppy disks, they will be able to hold the equivalent of nearly 5,300 "floppies" - which, in terms of "words", is more than anyone could possibly write in their entire lifetime, typing 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of their life even if they lived to be a hundred!
(Copyright 1998) |
