DVD region code blocks British Prime Minister from enjoying Obama's gift
By Darren Murph 
posted Mar 20th 2009 5:43AM
posted Mar 20th 2009 5:43AM
[Via techdirt, image courtesy of AmericaLives]
posted Mar 20th 2009 5:43AM
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You mean to tell me the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom cannot afford a region-free dvd player? Hell, when he was here, he should've stopped by a wal-mart and bought a cheap under $20 dollar player and a travel adapter for the UK.
I'm afraid he can't do that without being a massive hypocrite. Government policy is firmly in favour of DVD region locking and opposed to its circumvention, or the use of "grey market" DVDs, regardless of whether you go them from an imports website or the POTUS.
A lot of EU players have some kind of region free unlock code which can be punched in using the remote.
Thank you, MPAA, for proving what a pathetic scheme your region codes have been since the beginning.
You're doing a heckuva job Barry.
He'll also be lucky if he can play ntsc dvd's. In the states, I can't play pal dvd's with the ps3.
you forgot the most imprtant part the British prime minster has a pal tv those dvd where ntsc format so unless he gets an oppo or some other type of dvd player that can convert ntsc into a pal format he is still screwed.
Actually almost all TV equipment in Europe since the early 1990s is hooked up with SCART, a kind of component video connection, so colour encoding isn't an issue.
Not to mention that pesky little fact that these SD DVDs were encoded using the North American NTSC standard, while most European SD DVD players and TVs in Europe (and the UK) operate on the PAL standard.
What MORONS! These are the same people who criticized McCain (unfairly due to his war injuries) of not being able to type a simple email... Haven't these people ever heard of Amazon.co.uk???
All DVD players sold in Europe are NTSC/PAL compatible, so are 99% of all the TV's. So that is not an issue.
You're all criticizing those responsible for the DRM.
President Obama should have
A) Got a better gift
B) Had someone competent in his office get the gift. Not run out to a liquidating Circuit City and buying a bunch of movies at the last minute.
We get it, McCain didn't win. Cry more.
How about you stop thinking that everything Obama does is perfect? Bush sure wasn't.
I'm a huge Obama supporter and I agree, the gift was poorly thought out and in really poor taste to boot.
Obama was given a pencil holder made from the wood of a ship that fought against the slave trade.
Brown was given DVD box set that he can't play.
The White House was out of hot cocoa sampler packs it seems.
I guess with all this bail-out and economic stimulus money being given out, the Whitehouse's gift budget has to be cut a bit...
Get rid of region coding?
HD-DVD?
My thoughts, precisely.
That wouldn't cost nearly enough.
@Tama:
Ever wondered why European countries adopted/included the American NTSC-standard (about 90% of the applicable electronics) many years ago already (plus the SECAM system, by the way), whileas America is still not adopting the European PAL-standard (10% or less)?
(hint: think along the lines that less than 7% of people from the US actually HAS a passport, and is able to have a look outside the US (if they wanted), according to a study a few years back)
Example: the EU-version of the Panasonic BD-players plays both PAL and NTSC discs, while the US-version of the exact same player only plays NTSC discs...
The main reason for EU DVD players and BD players supporting both PAL and NTSC is that Europe for some weird reason shares DVD Region 2 with Japan, which uses NTSC, not PAL.
By making players compatible with PAL and NTSC, costs can be saved by making key components for players aimed at both markets in one production run. Why additional costs was not saved by also making US players in the same go is beyond me, though.
The reason very few people in the US is aware of this is the fact that the interest in the US for Europoean movies is way, way smaller than the interest in Europe for American movies.
LOL at Gordon Brown
Hearing that Obama gave DVDs as a gift to a head of state made me want to cringe. I mean honestly, it should have been a gift that Mr. Brown could keep as a momento when he is no longer in office. But DVDs? C'mon. That is simply absurd. It isn't as if he was going to watch these DVDs anyway but to hear that he couldn't, even if he wanted, is just further embarassment. FAIL!
I agree with Waldo. It is very embarrassing. I think I have that same set of movies, I bought it at Wal-Mart for 6.99 or somewhere in that price range.
Everybody's commenting on the region code when really we should be focusing on what a knucklehead Obama is. I guess it is fitting that Democrats picked a jackass for a mascot.