Bitter Dregs

Guess what, good old region coding is coming to HD! Yes, that nice anti-consumer scheme that DVD has had since the beginning is going to be stuck on HD-DVD next year (Blu Ray already has it). Read about it here We all know why region coding is such a pain at home, but at least there it's relatively easy to get your hands on a gray market player that can play discs from all regions (or punch in a particular code on your player's remote to hack it). However, as you all probably know, I deal with a lot of A/V issues here at the U of M and one of the nagging problems we have is faculty who want to use video material on DVD that happens to only be available outside region 1 (North America). This is often language studies, of course, but other classes that use video content run into this as well. So, they ask us to install region-free players in the classrooms so they can, you know, teach. Even though it's a complex question as to whether buying these players is legal, no one to my knowledge has been sued or prosecuted for buying or selling these machines. Nonetheless, the lawyers who represent the U haven't really been able to give us their blessing to provide them. Faculty are invonvenienced and we get yelled at. So, I'm so glad to see that they've continued this great tradition into the HD realm. Thanks.

Oh, and some of you might be interested in this bit of Star Trek news regarding the next film. Check it out here...the main thing is that Berman/Braga are definately outta there.