Stupid restrictions!

[wiseheart]

Am so very, very sad. The most gracious lhun_dweller sent me a set of Andromeda DVDs to my rather forgottable birthday. The thingies arrived today, and I was beside myself with happines, as they contained episodes I didn't even have recorded in German!

Well, I hopped to my brand new DVD-player (which I happen to hate, because the VCR part of his is incredibly complicated to use), put in one of my newest treasures - and the evil machine told me: "This disc may not be played in your region".

I don't know who makes these codes that make us, Europeans, unable to watch American DVDs, but I hate this person and hope his DVD player will spontaneously combust while he is watching his most favourite movie.

Comments

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

Someone, somewhere, is making lots of money from the region encoding of DVDs :(

Does your computer have a DVD drive? If so, you might be able to play the disc on that. Computers don't tend to mind the encoding so much.

Otherwise you might have to invest in a multi-region player… at least they're a lot cheaper than they were a few years ago.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

No, my PC doesn't have one. And I just bought this stupid VCR/DVD combi, which I've grown to dislike already. And *that* is called technical development, eh?

I'm live in fear that one day books, too, will be encoded...

[jilba.livejournal.com]

Have someone make you 'back-up' copies of your discs, region free. It can be done, and it's legal for you to own one set of back-up discs, you know the ones watch to keep the originals in pristine condition.

[mirasaui.livejournal.com]

I have the same problem. There is an old movie that I dearly want. They sell it all over Europe but not in the states. I ordered a copy from Amazon.UK, but it would not play in my machine! Buggers! That was VHS. And now, the movie has been new released on DVD - in Europe. But, still no copies available here.

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

It may be possible to hack your DVD player to make it region-free. I've heard about people doing it, but (alas) I don't know much more than that.

[lhun-dweller.livejournal.com]

When I looked up the model online, it said "multiple formats," which a techie friend said meant it "should" play different regional codes. Not so. So I've sent a friend a useless set of DVDS - so embarrassing! Dratted encoding bastards!!!

Don't worry: Tyr will find them and they will all die in highly improbably accidents that cannot be traced to him. Meantime, I am hunting for versions in the appropriate regional code. At least I know I picked the right volumes...

[lhun-dweller.livejournal.com]

We finds them AGAIN, we doesss, yesss! Findsss the Preciousessss.... amazon auf deutsch has them, although the episodes are, of course, split up differently on DVD volumes numbered differently and even some of the titles are changed rather than direct translations. (How am I supposed to know that "Immaculate Perception" has become "The Messiah???) Or "Music of a Distant Drum" is "The Holy Grail?"???

You would have laughed your ass off watching me struggle with the German-language site, armed only with an online automatic translation website!

The funniest part was me skimming through the German reviews looking for one of the "Tyr's wife" episodes - I figured if I found the word "wife," I'd know I had the right ep. Well, I was slowly reading through the various volumes' descriptions, searching one review after another. Suddenly, it dawned on me that the word I was looking for - kvinde - is NOT German. It's the Danish word for wife! But it didn't matter: the review for the ep didn't mention Tyr or his wife!

And then I discovered I've left my wallet at home. Soooo... I have them all stuck in my cart section labelled "order later" (or whatever it's called on the German site). And when I, my brain and my wallet are all at the computer next, I will order Region 2 encoded DVDS. Although they are not the same as the DVDs I sent you from the US, they have German and English language options and they'd damned well better have the right episodes!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Which movie is it?

The funny thing is, my VCR can play NTSC videos (which is the American system, IIRC). It just refuses to play American DVDs.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Well, look at the bright side. I'll keep them until the day I can give them back to you, and so you'll have the chance to drool over the absolute hotness that is Tyr Anasazi. It's really hard to believe that the actor is what? 44 years old? He certainly doesn't show his age.

Tyr will find them and they will all die in highly improbably accidents that cannot be traced to him.

That's my most secret hope. You can always count on a Nietzschean not to leave any traces.

BTW, do you know that I uset the Niets as a model for Orcs when writing The Last Stand?

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

The titles German dubbing gives to episodes - to any episodes of any given series - never cease to amaze me. The sheer badness of them can only be topped by the sheer stupidity of the episode summaries...

But you are really spoiling me. *blushes*

[mirasaui.livejournal.com]

The movie is a 1963 B&W film called 'The L-Shaped Room', directed by Brian Forbes and based on the novel of the same name written by Lynne Reid Banks. The directing and photography make the film, along with a good performance by Leslie Caron (a long time favoured actress).

I just lost a bid on eBay for the american version but the seller has another listed and I have put in a bid for it. Will see what happens in the next five days.

[lhun-dweller.livejournal.com]

I knew you would want to hear certain males' voices in the original, so I made sure they said ENGLISH and Deutsch. I figure the latter will help you sort out any lingering questions about the English dialogue, as German is your second language, right?

As for the episode names, I thought at first it was just my meager German. Now I see I was doing better than I thought: at least I recognized that the names were NOT the ones I was looking for...

As for my line about what Tyr will do to whomever thought up region encoding, I wish I could claim it for my own, but it's a direct lift from one of my favorite lines, delivered by none other than your Master Marsters. Tyr asks what he wants, and he replies with something like: "The usual. 100 wives. 1000 grandchildren bearing my name. And the deaths of all my enemies by highly improbably accidents that cannot be traced to me." And when he asks Tyr what Tyr wants, Tyr replies with a scary smile, "The usual."

It's in one of the episodes I'm sending you. Oops: spoiler alert...

[carterhaugh.livejournal.com]

Not all dvd players will allow you to get away with it, but some have the option of making them region-free by pressing certain buttons on the remote in a particular order. You could try here (http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks) or googling your dvdplayer mentioning something like "region-free".