How do DVD manufacturers convince DVD player manufacturers to cripple their product by include region restrictions?
December 8, 2005 7:49 AM Subscribe
How do DVD manufacturers convince DVD player manufacturers to cripple their product by include region restrictions? And why isn't the high cost of region-free DVD players considered a form of price-fixing?
Ignore for now the media-and-hardware manufacturers, like Sony -- what would compel a hardware maker like Apple, who has no stake in DVD sales, to include region restrictions at the hardware / firmware level? And why hasn't the market been flooded by cheap, region-free DVD players? (or to put it another way, if I wanted to start my own DVD-player company, what would be stopping me from making my players region-free?) I assume that it's a licensing issue, but I'm curious about the details, and about why it's not illegal, since it seems to restrict the market so much. (The latter is more a question about the scope of the anti-trust and pricefixing laws than about technology.)
Ignore for now the media-and-hardware manufacturers, like Sony -- what would compel a hardware maker like Apple, who has no stake in DVD sales, to include region restrictions at the hardware / firmware level? And why hasn't the market been flooded by cheap, region-free DVD players? (or to put it another way, if I wanted to start my own DVD-player company, what would be stopping me from making my players region-free?) I assume that it's a licensing issue, but I'm curious about the details, and about why it's not illegal, since it seems to restrict the market so much. (The latter is more a question about the scope of the anti-trust and pricefixing laws than about technology.)
It's not just the DCMA. You'd get sued into the ground for using the name "DVD" on a non-DVD Forum licensed player.
posted by cillit bang at 8:06 AM on December 8, 2005
posted by cillit bang at 8:06 AM on December 8, 2005
And why hasn't the market been flooded by cheap, region-free DVD players?
I don't know where you live but here in Toronto region free DVD players can be had for as low as $39. An excellent one can be bought for $100.
As for the purpose of regions on DVDs, I remarked on them in the blue a while ago.
posted by dobbs at 8:40 AM on December 8, 2005
I don't know where you live but here in Toronto region free DVD players can be had for as low as $39. An excellent one can be bought for $100.
As for the purpose of regions on DVDs, I remarked on them in the blue a while ago.
posted by dobbs at 8:40 AM on December 8, 2005
Best answer: One thing they control is CSS decoding keys.
A 'key' in this case is a cryptographic key. You can think of decryption as a function D(k,c) where k is your key (a small bit of data) and c is your 'cyphertext' a block of data that is incomprehensible.
if you have the right key D(k,c) = t, where 't' is the original encrypted 'text' which can also be something like a movie or other binary data.
DVD's work in a two-stage system. Each player has what's called a 'player key', but DVDs aren't encrypted with the player key, there encrypted with another key. I don't remember what it's called but for now I'll call it the film key, you use the film key to decrypt the movie.
In other words D(film-key, encrypted-film-data) = unencrypted-film-data that you can watch on your TV.
But how do you get the film key without the player key? Well, each DVD contains a ton of different player keys, each of which is encrypted itself. Hundreds of them.
When you put a DVD in your player, the player looks for it's copy of the film key, and decrypts that key using it's own key. In other words D(player-key, encrypted-film-key) = film-key.
So it's a two step process to decrypt the film key. But what if encrypted film key isn't there? Then, you can't play the movie on your player!
So in this way, film studios can actually control what players their movies will work on. If a manufacturer pisses off a movie studio like Fox or Sony enough, they'll stop putting those encrypted keys on their disks and screw all the customers who own those players. But if enough people have those players, customers will get pissed, so the film studios can't do this without taking some collateral damage themselves.
Keeping region-free players expensive probably placates the movie studios enough to prevent them from zapping the vendor.
The interesting thing about this is that the movie studios can do this extra-judiciously without any appeal to government authority
posted by delmoi at 8:47 AM on December 8, 2005
A 'key' in this case is a cryptographic key. You can think of decryption as a function D(k,c) where k is your key (a small bit of data) and c is your 'cyphertext' a block of data that is incomprehensible.
if you have the right key D(k,c) = t, where 't' is the original encrypted 'text' which can also be something like a movie or other binary data.
DVD's work in a two-stage system. Each player has what's called a 'player key', but DVDs aren't encrypted with the player key, there encrypted with another key. I don't remember what it's called but for now I'll call it the film key, you use the film key to decrypt the movie.
In other words D(film-key, encrypted-film-data) = unencrypted-film-data that you can watch on your TV.
But how do you get the film key without the player key? Well, each DVD contains a ton of different player keys, each of which is encrypted itself. Hundreds of them.
When you put a DVD in your player, the player looks for it's copy of the film key, and decrypts that key using it's own key. In other words D(player-key, encrypted-film-key) = film-key.
So it's a two step process to decrypt the film key. But what if encrypted film key isn't there? Then, you can't play the movie on your player!
So in this way, film studios can actually control what players their movies will work on. If a manufacturer pisses off a movie studio like Fox or Sony enough, they'll stop putting those encrypted keys on their disks and screw all the customers who own those players. But if enough people have those players, customers will get pissed, so the film studios can't do this without taking some collateral damage themselves.
Keeping region-free players expensive probably placates the movie studios enough to prevent them from zapping the vendor.
The interesting thing about this is that the movie studios can do this extra-judiciously without any appeal to government authority
posted by delmoi at 8:47 AM on December 8, 2005
sorry, I meant to say it's a two-step process to decrypt the film one of which is to decrypt the film key, and another to decrypt the move with the result of the first step.
posted by delmoi at 8:50 AM on December 8, 2005
posted by delmoi at 8:50 AM on December 8, 2005
Like dobbs said, I don't know what universe you're living in but these days just about any DVD player (except for the expensive name brand ones by Sony and the like) are all capable of region-less play. Oh sure, they may not say so on the box, and you will have to google for a website that tells you some magic combinations of buttons to push to make it so, but they ALL have that.
This is the dance that they do, because as others have said in order to license the playback technology, CSS key, and DVD logo, they have to implement region coding. But they all know that consumers hate that shit, so they program in some kind of "debug mode" or whatever that just happens to allow region-free playback (and often, bypassing macrovision and other encumbrances.) Oh, of course this code is not meant to be used outside of the factory, and they have no idea how these codes wind up on the internet *wink*.
In reality I would find it extremely disconcerting if the new DVD player I bought DIDN'T have this. It's kind of a standard thing these days.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:11 AM on December 8, 2005
This is the dance that they do, because as others have said in order to license the playback technology, CSS key, and DVD logo, they have to implement region coding. But they all know that consumers hate that shit, so they program in some kind of "debug mode" or whatever that just happens to allow region-free playback (and often, bypassing macrovision and other encumbrances.) Oh, of course this code is not meant to be used outside of the factory, and they have no idea how these codes wind up on the internet *wink*.
In reality I would find it extremely disconcerting if the new DVD player I bought DIDN'T have this. It's kind of a standard thing these days.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:11 AM on December 8, 2005
As a purely practical problem, I imagine the DVD menu interface is a bit tricky to implement if you don't have access to the spec. XBox Media Center, who are basically "anti-legal", had real trouble with that and had to reverse-engineer it. And they still have problems with quite a few discs.
posted by smackfu at 10:14 AM on December 8, 2005
posted by smackfu at 10:14 AM on December 8, 2005
Response by poster: I actually do own a DVD player that has such a "debug" mode, but it was given to me by a friend, who said that he found that particular model by looking it up, so I assumed that it was a bug / non-feature in what is an extremely cheap "off-brand" DVD player.
Thanks for the info, folks. Followup: It sounds like the DVD publishers are the ones in control, then, because all that cryptographic stuff is only there to protect their bottom line. (After all, you don't need any of that to play DVDs -- you can burn your own, completely unencrypted ones just fine.) So why is it that publishers are defining the playback terms instead of the hardware manufacturers? Seems a little backwards to me.
Goddamnit, I hate this industry.
posted by tweebiscuit at 10:50 AM on December 8, 2005
Thanks for the info, folks. Followup: It sounds like the DVD publishers are the ones in control, then, because all that cryptographic stuff is only there to protect their bottom line. (After all, you don't need any of that to play DVDs -- you can burn your own, completely unencrypted ones just fine.) So why is it that publishers are defining the playback terms instead of the hardware manufacturers? Seems a little backwards to me.
Goddamnit, I hate this industry.
posted by tweebiscuit at 10:50 AM on December 8, 2005
delmoi, if what you say is true, how come I can play DVDs that predate my DVD player?
posted by knave at 12:04 PM on December 8, 2005
posted by knave at 12:04 PM on December 8, 2005
And why hasn't the market been flooded by cheap, region-free DVD players?
In Aus you can get any number of cheap DVD players and just ask the salesperson for the cheat codes to de-region-ify it - with google as a last resort.
posted by pompomtom at 1:14 PM on December 8, 2005
In Aus you can get any number of cheap DVD players and just ask the salesperson for the cheat codes to de-region-ify it - with google as a last resort.
posted by pompomtom at 1:14 PM on December 8, 2005
like australia the european union talked about it being an illegal "restraint of trade" too but didn't do anything (yet?)
i also remember discussions about dvdforum and hddvd members trying to replace the region codes system with a better price-fixing system based on having all dvds to be sold thru a common distributor (but they got scared of the 100+ million euros fine nintendo had to pay a few years ago)
sorry for my bad english : )
posted by suni at 1:59 PM on December 8, 2005
i also remember discussions about dvdforum and hddvd members trying to replace the region codes system with a better price-fixing system based on having all dvds to be sold thru a common distributor (but they got scared of the 100+ million euros fine nintendo had to pay a few years ago)
sorry for my bad english : )
posted by suni at 1:59 PM on December 8, 2005
tweebiscuit scribbled "So why is it that publishers are defining the playback terms instead of the hardware manufacturers? Seems a little backwards to me."
No one wants a dvd player like they'd want a picasso, the only reason there is a market for the players is because of the content everyone wants to see.
If Sony would see the light and stop sweating the piracy so much they could make a killing hardware and content both.
posted by Mitheral at 2:29 PM on December 8, 2005
No one wants a dvd player like they'd want a picasso, the only reason there is a market for the players is because of the content everyone wants to see.
If Sony would see the light and stop sweating the piracy so much they could make a killing hardware and content both.
posted by Mitheral at 2:29 PM on December 8, 2005
In the UK supermarkets sell cheap Chinese players region free out of the box for under $60; some chains sell modified players (which usually means simply that the remote codes have been reset - rip off!) only the national retailers tend not to, and even that isn't totally true - often their own brands can be remoted coded.
I guess it isn't true in the US because people here want to buy and watch R1 DVDs on-line because they are often better featured. The same isn't true going the other way
posted by A189Nut at 2:33 PM on December 8, 2005
I guess it isn't true in the US because people here want to buy and watch R1 DVDs on-line because they are often better featured. The same isn't true going the other way
posted by A189Nut at 2:33 PM on December 8, 2005
Exactly what dobbs said. In fact, there was a time where imported region-free players could often be found for cheaper than domestic region 1 players, if you knew where to look (the asian malls were fantastic for this sort of thing).
posted by chrominance at 2:43 PM on December 8, 2005
posted by chrominance at 2:43 PM on December 8, 2005
Here in Vancouver, it is quite easy to find region-free players at major stores for under $100 Cdn. They are even often advertised in the sale flyers that way.
Bought 2 of them in the summer, at $69 each. One for me and one for my dad's birthday. Now I have an endless supply of gifts for him thanks to Amazon.uk.
Before that I was using DVDdecrypt and DVDShrink to strip the region coding from the few non-Region 1 discs I had access to.
posted by Razzle Bathbone at 3:38 PM on December 8, 2005
Bought 2 of them in the summer, at $69 each. One for me and one for my dad's birthday. Now I have an endless supply of gifts for him thanks to Amazon.uk.
Before that I was using DVDdecrypt and DVDShrink to strip the region coding from the few non-Region 1 discs I had access to.
posted by Razzle Bathbone at 3:38 PM on December 8, 2005
Exactly. In fact, it's quite funny that the cheap $50 no-name made-in-china DVD players often have the /most/ features, including:
- regionfree
- macrovision-free
- fast forwarding through forced intros
- playing CDR/DVDRs with standard AVI DIVX/XVID/MP4 files
Whereas if you buy an expensive name-brand player from a company that also happens to be in the movie studio business, you don't get any of that, and you get to pay a lot more for the privilege.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:45 PM on December 8, 2005
- regionfree
- macrovision-free
- fast forwarding through forced intros
- playing CDR/DVDRs with standard AVI DIVX/XVID/MP4 files
Whereas if you buy an expensive name-brand player from a company that also happens to be in the movie studio business, you don't get any of that, and you get to pay a lot more for the privilege.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:45 PM on December 8, 2005
This thread is closed to new comments.
Patent law and the DMCA. The appropriate techonology to decode a DVD is patented. The patent will not be licensed to people intending to make a DVD player that will play without checking region coding. The patents are already expensive enough that manufacturers don't want the DVD Forum (or whoever else owns the patents, hell, might even be the MPAA) to slap extra fines on top of the cost of the patents for even the slightest slipup.
The DMCA, of course, is a US-only legislation, and that alone would make decrypting a DVD without permission illegal.
That all being said, China is looking to build their own version of the DVD standards to avoid all this... We'll just have to see if dual-standard players get popular when it's set in stone.
posted by shepd at 7:57 AM on December 8, 2005