OldBoy

I have two players for my many other region wants, but will other regions adopt just as the US will or how exactly will that all work? And is this going to be another headachey problem to the "format" wars?

Will other region DVD's even be tempting now that HD-DVD's can handle the more/better content?

Spiky

They are going to a new region scheme. Was that posted here? I know I read it recently, but not sure which site I was at. Something like US/Asia is one, and Europe/Australia is another, with fewer regions total than DVD has.

Other countries are probably going to ATSC, as well. That is part of the HD plan, to simplify the world. But it is the USA that is way ahead since it is mostly a US plan. Various companies and/or the UK govt has announced various plans for them, don't remember details offhand.

I think this means there will only be one format instead of the old NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM mess. Still probably want the capability of multi-region due to various censoring from one country to the next and potentially different extras. But I think the video will likely be less of an issue than the current DVD market, where I have several R2 discs just because they haven't bothered to do an anamorphic version in R1.

joshd2012

Blu-Ray is set up as follows:

Region 1 (the Americas and East Asia, excluding China but including Japan), Region 2 (Europe and Africa) and Region 3 (Russia, China and Others).

I imagine HD-DVD will follow the same regional coding as DVDs, as they are both DVD Forum formats, but that is yet to be seen.

DthRdrX

Those new region schemes were just decided on a few weeks ago I guess, but reports say studios are going back to discuss them again.

Duder

As an anime fan, I'm rather excited at the prospect of Japan and America being in the same region.

Grubert

Obviously, they've lumped all the 'HD-ready' countries together in region 1. High-def penetration in Europe is minuscule, so I don't think we'll get any titles for a long time.

Additionally, region protection will apparently be much more difficult to remove on Blu-ray than on DVD. As a European who buys a lot of titles overseas, this sucks. I was hoping to buy some HD titles from amazon and similar sources.

The Bus

Woo-hoo! South America too!



Now I can add Dejemosnos de Vainas to the list of TV titles I want to import.

DthRdrX

Well don't feel all bad, I was reading that Europe will get around 24 exclusive Hd-dvd titles shortly after launch.

Spiky

If you think it will be all R1 to start, just get an R1 player. You are already used to buying overseas.

Grubert

Yeah, I'd already thought of it. In fact I think I might get a PS3 from Japan or America at launch (word is it'll arrive in Europe at least six months later).

KBDVD

Hi,

I'm in the UK and was fully intending to go with importing a US R1 BD &/0r HD-DVD player upon their respective launches as I did for R1 DVD, (I have over 1,000 R1 DVD titles) however the Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes that "may" be incorporated into BD & HD-DVD hardware "may" scupper this plan! ..... Especially if connection and registration via telephone line, (to enable hardware deactivation should "pirate activity" be suspected) prove to be part of the set-up!

Does anybody have any further info on this aspect of the hardware from CES?