HD DVD to incorporate region-coding restrictions

HD DVD is to get region coding after all, if the DVD Forum, the industry organization that maintains the DVD format, has its way. This week, the Forum decided to put in place a team to create a region-coding scheme for the next-generation optical disc technology.

I’m not surprised, I knew HD-DVD would never remain region free. The question is will they just adopt the DVD regions, which frankly never worked so well and don’t make a lot of sense (The UK and Japan are both Region 2?), will they adopt regions similar to, or the same as, Blu-ray (which could make sense with 2 of the three HD-DVD studios also releasing on BD), or create yet another region map?

As for the China-only physical disc… What’s up with that? ‘HD DVD content’ – so in other words it is a new disc that happens to use the same codecs. By that measure, Blu-ray is a “physical disc format capable of holding HD DVD content.” So if it isn’t DVD and it isn’t HD-DVD, what the hell is it?

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
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