Locked in the zone

Do you remember when those evil media companies thwarted your attempts to buy a DVD overseas and play it in a different world DVD zone?  Region locking on the DVD player (Zone 1 US, Zone 2 Europe, Zone 3 Asia, Zone 4 Australasia, etc.) meant you had a problem if you tried to move the media between countries.

Over the years though, people started to realise that even though the DVD player was set to the home zone, it could usually be changed to a different zone or the region checking could be removed entirely with a cryptic sequence of numbers made widely available through the webosphere and then entered via the remote control.  Next, the manufacturers (at least the nicer ones) gave up the pretence of locking and even started selling the players as multi-region capable right out of the box.

People bought lots of DVDs, consumers were happy, retailers were happy (particularly those with overseas customers) and even the evil media makers muffled their bleating.

Then along came a shiny new high definition technology called Blu-ray and people threw out their DVD players so they could play the new kid on the block.  No problem, Mr Customer, our Blu-ray player has backward compatibility and will play your DVDs. Are we nice or what?  We media makers have also realised that the world zones were too numerous so we've simplified things and this time we have put both Europe and Australasia in a zone we call Zone B, since Zone 2 and Zone 4 didn't make much sense.  Be aware though that we expect you customers to play nice too and only buy Blu-ray discs from your own zone so we're locking that down real tight - you won't be able to multi-zone your Blu-ray player to play those cheaper, bonus feature-laden US discs so don't even try.

The evil media makers, never ones to understand how to look after their customers, kept this new Blu-ray technology priced so high in Australasia that most people didn't buy the discs and instead bought more DVDs, because unlike Blu-ray, DVD was now as cheap as chips.

But hey - what's this?  My new Blu-ray player won't play my DVDs I bought from Amazon UK or Amazon US.  No worries - I'll just unlock the DVD part of the player.  WRONG!  It's locked down as tight as the Blu-ray and I've already junked my old multi-region DVD player.  One step forward, two steps back.

People long ago learned to hate media companies who seem determined to commit commercial suicide.  In the Blu-ray era that disgust will undoubtedly reach a new level of loathing and only the pirates will win.

Footnote - When I reported the locking issue to Panasonic they took my player into their workshop and unlocked the DVD part of my Blu-ray player for me free of charge, unlike LG who greeted my request with as much warmth as a Nuremberg trial.