DVD Region 2: Don't beat it, join it

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A lot of fuss is made about the region coding on DVDs, which makes it impossible for example to play a disk bought in France on a player bought in Canada without cracking1 the hardware.

If you live in a Region 2 country around half the space in DVD magazines is devoted to reviews of Region 1 disks, almost on the assumption that you will have a cracked player. Now while it is true that most Hollywood films are released in the US much earlier than Europe, and that there is a large back catalogue available on Region 1, the situation in Region 2 is not as bad as the magazines claiming to list "every region 2 DVD" are making out, particularly if you like art-house or world cinema.

The thing is, that France, Germany and the UK have quite different DVDs available, even though they are all Region 2 PAL, and because DVDs can carry multiple soundtracks and subtitle tracks you can usually enjoy the foreign disc as much as one bought at home.

For UK region 2 discs, try Amazon, VideoParadise or DVDstreet.

For France region 2 discs, try Amazon, Fnac or digitall.

For Germany region 2 discs, try Amazon, DVD-Supermarkt or DVD-Laden.

It seems bizarre though that the on-line retailers don't catch on to this and sell the foreign discs too. How hard would it be for say Amazon, with stores in the UK, France and Germany, to cross-sell their catalogue.

Just one, DVD Zone 2 seems to be making the effort to gather all the region 2 discs under one roof.

No-one however is making the effort to get discs from Japan, which bizarrely has the same region code as Europe, although all the dics are NTSC not PAL (your DVD player will be fine, but you might need a newish TV). Moreover, many Hollywood titles are released in Japan months earlier than in Europe. Most Japanese on-line retailers won't send overseas but FromJP.com2 will. I've ordered several Disney titles from them months before their European video release, and with Disney's policy of withdrawing titles after a few months, shopping overseas can greatly increase your window of opportunity.

Some of my most peculiar or inexplicable buys to date:

  • Metallica S & M 2 DVD set: £36 in the UK High Street, £29.49 on 1-2 week order from VideoParadise, not stocked by any of the region 2 Amazons, 198F (£17) in stock from digitall.
  • Les Visiteurs (French SF Comedy with Jean Reno): UK: 4x3 pan and scan with subtitles always on, France: free on side B of Les Visiteurs II in proper aspect ratio with French and English subtitles.
  • Porco Rosso (Japanese animation bu Miyazaki Hayao): Not available on DVD in Japan or region 1. Available in France with Japanese/French/Portuguese sound/subtitles (French voiceover is by ... Jean Reno).

Who needs region 1? Shop around the whole of region 2 instead.

1In practice you can buy "chipping" kits that remove the protection of your DVD player, and many DVD-ROM drives in PCs can have their firmware modified to remove the protection. See e.g. DTL's Region Hacks guide2Their site has just been redesigned, and at time of writing the English pages are not working, but they usually have an English catalogue and order pages too.

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