{"id":694,"date":"2008-05-02T09:23:30","date_gmt":"2008-05-01T22:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=694"},"modified":"2010-02-13T11:39:27","modified_gmt":"2010-02-13T00:39:27","slug":"i-love-warner-bros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=694","title":{"rendered":"I Love Warner Bros"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have previously whinged about region coding on Blu-ray. If you are considering purchasing a Blu-ray disc from overseas, particularly from the US, go first to the Blu-ray Region Code Info<\/a> page and make sure that your contemplated purchase is in one of the green coloured ‘Region Free’ lines.<\/p>\n

If the movie is distributed by Warner Bros, you’re likely to be in luck. I have just inspected this page and all the dozens of Warner Bros titles are region free. Brilliant, Warner Bros! I love you not only for your fine movies, but for providing wide access to them.<\/p>\n

The only other label for which I’ve been able to find similar results has been Paramount. But I’m not certain Paramount is really back into the Blu-ray swing of things, having abandoned Blu-ray for HD DVD last year (it, like Warner Bros, started off releasing movies on both formats). The Paramount Blu-ray titles available on Amazon<\/a> seem to have been around for a while, and at least one — Shooter<\/em><\/a> — is selling in Blu-ray format from a minimum of $US57.95, suggesting that it is no longer available from the source, and remaining supplies are being bid up.<\/p>\n

It’s interesting that the two companies that launched into Blu-ray and HD DVD agnostically are not (so far) using region codes on Blu-ray (HD DVD doesn’t support region coding). When Universal (which was HD DVD-only from the start) finally starts releasing Blu-ray discs, perhaps it also will be region free.<\/p>\n

Also on Blu-ray Region Code Info, I notice that it lists the recent No Country for Old Men<\/em> from Miramax as region free, while several older Miramax titles are region coded. Could it be that this studio, at least, is moving away from them?<\/p>\n

There may continue to be a need for region coding, such as when the international distribution rights to a movie are held by a different company to that with US distribution rights. But I do wonder why companies such as Twentieth Century Fox and Sony and Disney\/Buena Vista needlessly complicate their inventories. I’ve just noticed that Fox has applied region coding to Wall Street<\/em><\/a>, which was made way back in 1987 for goodness sakes. Worse yet? Image Entertainment has released in the US a Blu-ray version of Breaker Morant<\/em><\/a>, a 1980 Australian film. But it is region A coded, so it can’t be played on Australian Blu-ray players.<\/p>\n

Thank goodness The Searchers<\/a><\/em> and Casablanca<\/a><\/em> and the like were made by Warner Bros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have previously whinged about region coding on Blu-ray. If you are considering purchasing a Blu-ray disc from overseas, particularly from the US, go first to the Blu-ray Region Code Info page and make sure that your contemplated purchase is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,15,36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":695,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions\/695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}