A BRIEF VISIT TO REGION 2 by Dan Ramer

DVDFILE.COM "foreign correspondent" Dan Ramer recently visited London, and took a brief look at the state of DVD in Region 2. Here is part 2 of his experiences...

When I sent my little report to Peter, A Brief Visit to Region 2, I hadn't realized that our overseas friends were looking for a forum to express their understandable frustrations. Having received a surprising number of entertaining and informative e-mail messages, I thought you might be interested in how citizens of Region 2 view the state of their DVD market. I'll try to keep it short. (One caveat: for the most part, I attempted to include information consistent among more than one independent writer in the hope that this might ensure accuracy. I did not research for verification. Also, please recall that distribution is quite different overseas, so a DVD title offered by a studio here may be offered by quite another studio in Region 2.)

I was reminded that I failed to mention that PAL and SECAM are 25 frame per second systems. NTSC is, of course, nominally 30 frames per second. These are artifacts left over from monochrome days gone by when frame rates were derived from half the A.C. line frequency (117 V 60 Hz in the States, 220 V 50 Hz in the U.K. and Europe). I was also told that contemporary French TVs are both PAL and SECAM compatible. Apparently SECAM is used in France only for broadcast and some VHS releases. DVD in region 2 is exclusively PAL. That explains why the DVD tour of the Louvre was PAL only. There was universal agreement that letterboxed broadcasts are not only tolerated in Region 2 but welcome. Region 2 viewers seem to want to experience the director's vision.

The DVD roll out in Region 2 has been slow. Remember what it was like during the US seven-city test market? Warner and Buena Vista are readily available. Universal and Paramount titles are just being offered. New Line is expected to start distribution in June and Fox is due in September. And yet, a few titles unavailable in the States can be found in Region 2, like Jackie Brown and The Shawshank Redemption.

I was surprised to learn that for Region 2, Buena Vista is producing double-sided discs rather than double-layered discs. Face/Off, The Rock, Air Force One, and GI Jane are all reported to be flippers. One writer explained that Starship Troopers has been announced as a flipper and will not contain any supplements. And as you'd expect, this situation has provoked disappointment and anger. I would have expected European production plants to have learned from our growing pains and would have purchased the latest and greatest equipment to avoid producing the dreaded flipper. Is this where our obsolete production equipment went after all our studios embraced RSDL?

Such problems have spawned a brisk market for chipped players capable of reading Region 1 DVDs. As many as 60% of the players sold by one particular French vendor were reported to be chipped. This explains the huge selection of Region 1 titles at the Paris Virgin MegaStore.

Problems in the UK are more complex. In a well-publicized action during the later part of '98, the Federation Against Software Theft (a copyright protection group) raided establishments offering Region 1 DVDs and confiscated them. The justification was that the content had not been approved by the British Board of Film Classification. My correspondents believe this was done at the request of the studios. Yet, according to other messages I received, no such raids took place in France, Germany, or Sweden, implying that this may indeed have been an internal UK issue. It's apparently permissible for individuals in Britain to purchase Region 1 DVDs, so thanks to the censors, the estimate of UK chipped players ran as high as 75%.

Film censorship in the UK also seems to be blamed for a lack of special features, like commentaries. After the censor takes a cut at a film, the commentary becomes incoherent and is then omitted. Some good titles are offered, but they are rare. I'm told that Das Boot, Contact, Gattaca and LA Confidential are equivalent to their Region 1 counterparts.

As I suspected, our overseas friends are savvy shoppers and they, too, take advantage of discounts both locally and on-line. Warner titles, such as the Contact DVD I price-compared at Harrods and Virgin, can be bought in the UK for as little as $19. In addition to on-line shopping at US web sites, European stores (like Saturn in Germany and Virgin MegaStore in France) carry hundreds of Region 1 titles and, surprisingly, some have them by the US street date. It would seem that there are no laws in France or Germany that prohibit the sale of Region 1 titles. I was also reminded that there is a 20.6% Value Added Tax in France, which may explain the higher list prices for DVDs I observed there. Prices for Region 1 DVDs seem to be even higher in Sweden, where one writer explained that DVDs start at $29 and spiral upward from there.

Region 2 is just getting started. Excluding DVD-ROM drives, it was reported that there have been only 250,000 players and 2,500,000 discs sold in 1998. As in the States, sales of Laserdisc players are dropping rapidly; such players are currently being offered at 67% off of list price. France is reported to have the largest DVD market share in Region 2 (I was certainly impressed by the size of the MegaStore display). And Region 2 sales are expected to triple in 1999.

The one issue I still haven't adequately explored is the one you would expect me to be most concerned about, 16x9 enhanced video. Do Region 2 DVDs offer true 16x9 enhanced video? Or are they letterboxed? Or worse, are they pseudo-anamorphic transfers converted from letterboxed masters (as has been reported in the States for some Region 2 Buena Vista titles)? Do Region 2 TVs routinely offer an easy way to perform the vertical squeeze required to properly view 16x9 enhanced DVDs? Once again, perhaps a few informed readers can enlighten me. (Editor's Note: Some of the Warner-distributed Buena Vista transfes overseas are "digitally imitated" 16x9. However, Miramax has released true 16x9 transfers of many of their titles to overseas distributors. More on this in a future report.)

All the mistakes and missteps we experienced initially in Region 1 seem to be plaguing Region 2. Why Region 2 producers haven't been paying attention to Region 1's demand for RSDL and supplements is simply incomprehensible. But I'm confident that if our Region 2 friends are patient (and they let the studios know how they feel), they'll be rewarded with better transfers and more features. We were.

If you would like to learn more about non-Region 1 DVD, visit our International section for a wide range of great International DVD sites and resources.

»» Return to PART 1