No this is not a rant at service in Russian shops. Whilst it leaves much to be desired it is a massive improvement over the way that we are treated by the MPAA.
The old DVD player has finally given up the ghost so off we trotted to one of Moscow's white good stores. Given that I have no knowledge of what is a good and a bad DVD player the range seemed OK. We passed on the karaoke versions.
Shipped the blessed piece of metal coloured plastic home, plugged it in, connected it to the screen, popped in a DVD. And out it popped again. Turn on screen for a hint - “DVD not authorised for your region.”
Now this was a DVD which SWMBO had lavished vast mounts of cash on in Heathrow's departure lounge. Not one of your Gorbushka knock-off's. So we had legitimately bought a DVD in Region 2 (Europe) and brought it to Region 5 (the FSU - broadly) without any warning that it might well not work in the place to which we were flying. You can just imagine the signs around HMV in Heathrow;
“Due to anti-customer policies the DVD we are offering you to buy here will probably not work where you are going. As it is unlikely that you will be passing back through this airport again in the near future I am afraid that our money back guarantee is worthless. Enjoy this piece of moronically stupid entertainment featuring talentless actors earning enormous sums of money.”
Three hours later, an hour of which was spent with the mighty Google, and two syncing and unsyncing and re-syncing SWMBO's hijacked Treo, the newly-acquired DVD player had been fed with code which convinced it that it was everywhere simultaneously.
So now we can legitimately watch our legitimately acquired DVD's on any machine we care to, whenever we care to. There is a fairly good chance that we will also take a more liberal view of the benefits of the kiosk knock-offs.
Paying Tom Cruise an obscene amount of money to star in crap films does not give you the right to restrict how and where I watch what I have paid for.
Treat me like shit and I will reciprocate.
[composed and posted with ecto]
1 comment:
Yes, been there done that.
Actually, it rather amused me to learn that the world is divided into 5 DVD regions. It's a whole new perspective.
Maybe soon we will talk about advanced civilisations as 'DVD region 1 countries', and use phrases like 'DVD region 5 countries' instead of 'the third world'.
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