DVD play

[August Ragone]

> From: "Abe' Mark Nornes" <amnornes at umich.edu>
> Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 09:22:32 +0900 
> 
>One of the few downsides to the DVD revolution is the "regionalism" built
>into the discs and machines. For the uninitiated, that basically means that
>the discs you buy in one region of the world can't be played on players
from
>another region. It was a defence against piracy demanded by Hollywood,
which
>threatened non-cooperation with the hardware makers if they didn't do
>_something_. I suspect that, while Chinese piracy gets all the attention,
>they were particularly worried about a market like Japan where prices are
>ridiculously inflated. This regionalism is of special concern for those of
>us interested in seeing foreign films that are ignored by local
>distributors, so I thought quite a few people on the list would find this
>post from another list of interest.

Interestingly, a number of DVD manufacturers have open-region/mulit-region
players available, in a variety of combinations (with CD, with LD, with CD
and LD, etc.). These are readily available through a number of electronics
retailers in Japan and the US. One of such US retailers is Mikado Laser
Japan (www.mikadosf.com), located in San Francisco, CA.

Hope this helps,
August Ragone
Kaiju Productions
Henshin Online [www.fandom.com/godzilla/henshin.asp]