U.K. leader can't view Obama's gift

[babylonsister]

Oh noes! Story originally comes from the Telegraph, so take this with a huge grain of salt.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/03/uk-leader-cant.html

U.K. leader can't view Obama's gift


The movie industry's digital protection schemes have turned President Obama's present for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown into little more than a set of coasters.

British newspapers earlier this month made hay out of the supposedly unequal exchange of gifts between the two leaders during Brown's visit to Washington. Brown gave an ornamental pen holder with an indirect tie to the Oval Office desk — both items were made from the timber of sister ships — and a first-edition set of a seven-volume biography about Winston Churchill.

Obama responded with a DVD set featuring 25 classic American movies. "About as exciting as a pair of socks," declared The Daily Mail.

Now it turns out Brown can't play the discs because of region-specific limitations, The Daily Telegraph reports.

DVD players are coded to limit themselves to material meant for specific geographic areas. The United States and Canada are Region 1. Western and Central Europe are Region 2.

Players sold in one region aren't supposed to play discs sold in another. Had the same sort of protection applied to Brown's gift, Obama would need a special key sold only in Europe to open the Churchill books.

People willing to experiment with hacks can go online to find relatively easy ways around region-coding prohibitions on discs. But a spokesman for the prime minister referred a Telegraph writer to the White House for "technical assistance."

[Bill219]

1. I cannot believe that this story...

Is getting so much attention

You can go on the web and find any number of places that sell multi region DVD players

I have two of them in my house

[dipsydoodle]

4. You can no longer buy

multi region DVD players openly in Europe under the cloak of anti piracy legislation. See my post below.

[ananda]

2. Geezus,how ignorant these leaders are!

All he has to do is get an all region
DVD player.

[dipsydoodle]

3. That maybe because

he's too stupid to play them on a computer - Windows Media Player lets you reconfigure.

Aside from that any of the Asian owned shops at the bottom of the Edgware Road W2 in London will do the necessary to convert a normal payer to multiregion at no extra cost - only takes a minute or so.

The maufacturers hide behind piracy legislation in Europe in an effort to prevent us buying DVDs for less , for example , on Amazon.com instead of Amazon.co.uk.