DVD regions revisited

The regional debate

By Tony Davey

July 2003

As I was looking through the Herald newspaper I noticed an advertisement for a shop that retails both Region 1 and Region 4 DVD's in Auckland. It got me wondering is region 4 now good enough to stand on its own two feet or does region 1 still dominate local DVD sales?

When I first started buying DVD's (first ever purchase was Eric Clapton’s Unplugged in 1998), the range was very limited.

In July/August 1998 Columbia Tri-Star started releasing a whopping four titles per month (A Few Good Men was among the first movie releases) but it didn’t take too long before other distributors started leaking out titles.

Warner Home Video and Warner Music were fairly quick with titles like Eric Clapton’s Unplugged, Tim Burton’s Batman and The Lost Boys being amongst their early releases and Village Roadshow was there early on also (The Wedding Singer if memory serves). Universal were next in early 1999 (Twister and Daylight were early releases), followed by Buena Vista in mid 1999 (Con Air and The Rock). Fox entered the DVD market with Titanic in late 1999 and amazingly enough it took until 2001 for Paramount to enter the Region 4 market, nearly three years after the commencement of DVD in New Zealand.

Today, DVD is about as mainstream as McDonalds. I remember getting excited the first time I saw a DVD player for under $1,000 in late 1998, now you can pick up a DVD player virtually anywhere (even Woolworths supermarkets of all places) for under $200 and DVD movies are available in more stores than players.

A quick browse through most medium sized record shops (or your local Warehouse) shows a huge volume of titles available with virtually every genre of title catered for.

The way I see it, there are pros and cons to buying either region 1 or region 4 discs:

Availability

There was a time when we would have to wait months (or years) after a title is available in region 1 before being able to buy it locally. Region 4 now gets releases of major titles, such as Spiderman, Harry Potter and Star Wars, as quickly as Region 1 (if we do lag behind region 1, it is frequently only a matter of weeks). In some cases region 4 even has titles ahead of Region 1 (Terminator:SE).

Availability of movies in region 4 was also effected by studios introducing rental windows for DVD’s. This is a format that was initially targeted at the movie collector aka the movie nut aka Mr Obsessed, but when it went mainstream, rental stores started missing out massively on income.

Enter Rental Windows. This is not a new concept and has been around with VHS for many years, but is one that really got up the nose of Mr Obsessed, as he had to wait to buy the eagerly awaited copy of the latest blockbuster movie.

While the powers that be didn’t listen fully to Mr Obsessed, some studios did meet him half way and started releasing two versions of a movie on DVD. A "movie only" version stripped of all extras (except maybe a trailer) and then some months later, a special edition, packed full of all the extras that make Mr Obsessed drool (commentaries, behind the scenes footage, deleted scenes, outtakes, featurettes etc), sometimes charging a bit more for the special edition.

This is where the local distributors may have got it wrong. By making the consumer wait, or offering an inferior product, they “forced” Mr Obsessed to use this wonderful thing called the internet and buy from overseas. Whilst some people might not care whether they have to wait another few months to buy the latest and greatest, nor may they care about the four-disc ultimate collectors special extreme edition, Mr Obsessed does.

The other aspect with availability is the selection of titles available. The latest count, according to the michaeldvd site, is approximately 6500 region 4 movies available now; the USA had a similar number of movies available by the end of 1999 (kinda puts our market in perspective, doesn’t it).

I think that Mr Obsessed is sometimes forced to shop overseas purely because the title he/she may want is simply not available locally (and possibly never will be if it is an obscure title that may have a limited market).

Video and audio superiority

Region 1 sometimes gets better versions of a DVD (by better, I refer to the technical aspects of a movie). Where a region 1 DVD may be anamorphic, or 16x9 enhanced, the region 4 version sometimes is not (one example of this is Casino, a great gangster movie with stars such as Robert DeNiro, James Woods, Sharon Stone and everyone’s favourite gangster, Joe Pesci. The region 1 version is 16:9 enhanced or anamorphic while the region 4 version is not).

While the benefits of an anamorphic picture may be less noticeable on smaller displays it is significant on large TV’s, widescreen TV’s (which are getting broader in range and more affordable by the day) and projection systems.

Other technical differences can be with the audio tracks available. Some region 1 discs have a DTS/DTS-ES track but the region 4 version may only have a Dolby Digital track (Saving Private Ryan is one example of this where DTS was available on a separate disc in region 1, but not available at all in region 4). This can also work in reverse. The region 4 version of Enemy at the Gates has a DTS track, yet the region 1 version does not, so don’t take it as a given that region 4 are always behind the times.

Perhaps most significantly different between the two regions is proper aspect ratios. Where the region 1 version may preserve the original aspect ratio from the theatrical release, the region 4 is cropped or worse, pan and scanned.

One example of this is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The region 1 release preserved the original aspect ratio from the theatrical release, yet the region 4 version was given a butchered 4x3 “pan'n'scam” treatment with up to 30% of the picture missing).

While anamorphic versus non anamorphic is a fairly easy argument, and so is correct aspect ratio vs cropped or pan and scan, I think the jury is still out on DTS versus Dolby Digital.

Yes DTS has higher bit-rates than Dolby Digital tracks, but is usually set to output at a higher volume (sometimes, a sound that is louder is mistakenly thought of as better).

Another aspect of the sometimes superior product from region 1 is in regards to extras. This is the additional eye candy that has Mr Obsessed foaming at the mouth about impending releases.

This is more of a problem with some older releases, but occasionally region 4 still gets duped with major blockbusters (Region 1 got a two-disc special edition of Shrek right off the bat, yet region 4 got stuck with a single disc edition devoid of many extras).

There is one big catch to this whole “superior” thing about region 1 versus region 4 and that is that region 1 operates the US standard NTSC colour system and region 4 operates on the PAL colour system. PAL DVD’s contain approximately 576 vertical lines of resolution (based on an anamorphic image), where as NTSC contains 480 vertical lines of resolution (based on an anamorphic image), therefore PAL discs normally have higher resolution than NTSC.

As with anamorphic vs non-anamorphic, this may be less noticeable on smaller displays compared to large screen TV’s and projection systems.

These differences may not apply in all cases, but it is likely that where there are differences between the region 1 disc and the region 4 disc, these differences may be one of the largest influences on Mr Obsessed’s purchasing decisions.

Price

The last thing and probably the last thing on Mr Obsessed’s list is pricing. I think here in New Zealand, we are generally treated reasonably well and, with virtually everywhere retailing movies, competition amongst retailers keeps prices in check.

It is rare that a disc purchased overseas in region 1 will be significantly cheaper than its region 4 counterpart (in some circumstances, the price overseas is significantly more – take Band of Brothers, you can buy the box set in NZ for about $100 or, pay about $US115 for nearly the same box set, same extras, but with a DTS track).

Summary

Movies are available at a reasonable time-frame and frequently released at the same time, if not only a short time after their region 1 counterparts.

Local competition keeps prices in check, and from time to time makes buying movies, as cheap if not cheaper than a night at the flicks (the recent release of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets at $26.50 is one such example).

Forgetting the whole Dolby Digital versus DTS debate for a minute, there is often little between the technical aspects of a movie (I think studios quickly learned that Mr Obsessed wouldn’t put up with an inferior product) and non-anamorphic movie DVD’s are now (thankfully) rare.

I think our local market does fairly well for a country with fewer people in it than some US counties and now buying locally really is a viable option.

[Editor's note: any similarities between "Mr Obsessed" and the author of this article are purely coincidental!]

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