PS3 REGION FREE PLAYBACK

[pcking]

Hi I,m a long time user of the ps3 (2007) and enjoy sacds and blu ray concert music,and would like to buy more blu rays from overseas . But is it possible to change my player (region b ) to region free.


THANKS

[Brandon B]

Not really. But most movies go to region free after a couple of years, and a lot of catalog releases are offered region free as they come out. Shouldn't be much of an issue unless you are after brand new movies outside their release window in your country.

[The Seventh Taylor]

Do they really? It's not only a matter of release windows but also of movie studios not being organized globally and selling distribution rights per country to local distributors, right? Where region coding has to protect those companies' rights and prevent grey/parallel imports. Or have the studios got their act together after all and acquired their international distribution network?

(By the way, it's always eluded me why record companies have for ages been able to do simultaneous wordwide releases but film studios haven't. Some trends including online piracy may finally force them to put an dend to these endlessly staggered release schedules.)

[Brandon B]

Well, I can't say universally, but I spend a fair amount of time in a forum about blu-ray releases, and it seems like most popular catalog releases with different versions released in other countries are often region free. For instance the new remastered Alien set is about half as expensive in the UK compared to the US, and so a lot of people were ordering it from amazon UK with no issue. Same was true of some other films like the old Eastwood westerns, Highlander, Bourne trilogy, etc.

It seems like I see a lot more discussion of "I got this title from Europe because the disk was better" than people complaining they couldn't because of region coding. Also have seen several mentions of movies with later blu-ray re-releases dropping the original region codes.

So "got their act together" is probably an overly generous description of anything the studios do, but I would say the motion on this matter is in the right direction.

As for the difference in music vs. movies, well there is some logic there. Promotion of a movie is a huge expensive coordinated effort through several mediums, and a studio often does not want to lay out the cost to do this simultaneously in all international markets at once. Additionally, there is extra post production work to dub or subtitle films which they don't have time to complete to meet domestic release dates which necessitate a later release in other markets, as well as unfinished distribution deals. Lack of region coding would pretty well undermine that, as people abroad would buy the disk instead of attending the theater, or so they believe anyway.

Also, without DRM, there is no region coding. I guarantee you the labels all wish they could put that genie back in the bottle and add both DRM AND region coding to music, but they can't, at least not with physical media distribution. Witness the ridiculous pricing differences in Europe's various iTunes stores though.