The movie industry is killing itself with regionalisation

I love watching movies, especially at home. I have a Sony full-HD TV & home theatre system at home and am planning to get a compatible Blu-Ray player of the same brand at some point.  My efforts to go HD with my movie collection have hit a snag, however: I don’t buy all my movies in Europe so I need multi-region players.  Sony doesn’t seem to sell multi-region Blu-Ray players, only DVD players.

Why wouldn’t I get all my stuff here? Simple, they don’t sell many Mexican or Asian movies here, and for Disney movies especially I like Mexican dubbing, just as for anime I prefer Finnish dubbing instead.  I don’t download movies nor buy pirated goods, so am especially annoyed by all the warnings in the movies I buy every time I play them.

Why would the movie industry punish me by treating me like a delinquent instead of a customer?  Why can’t enjoy media I pay for? Don’t they understand I’m a paying customer asking for a product, if they would only provide it to me?

2 thoughts on “The movie industry is killing itself with regionalisation”

  1. This post really hits the spot.

    It’s a real wonder that movie companies haven’t already realised that the unskippable warnings are only seen by those who actually pay for the product.

    The pirated versions either have the warnings completely removed or at least they are skippable.

    Also the artificial region coding becomes more and more a nuisance in modern world where you just cannot get some items from the region your DVD/BluRay-player supports.

    Personally I prefer buying the movies I like, but in some occasions it just isn’t a realistic option. This and some other issues in copyright laws, and the media companies’ desire to become the world police with a finger on each of our ISP connections, has made me join the Finnish Pirate Party already some time ago.

  2. I have the same problem since I moved to The Netherlands, I had to go to my local media shop and ask if there was a HD multiregional DVD, but there wasn’t. To solve the problem, they had a code to convert my brand DVD into a multiregion, but this was just as Service as I’m a customer of that local shop. In my ideal world we should be able to download movies just as we buy music in iTunes or Amazon to store your movies in HD on a media hub. But we’ll see, I feel the same, I pay for DVD’s and music, but I don’t get the service I should.

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