Ponder: Region coding on DVDs was dreamed up when they created the DVD standard by a) Movie studios and b) DVD technology manufacturers. They wanted to be able to restrict where you can buy your movies from, due to ratings issues, money, and of course, money. Why would people go to see a movie in the cinemas in Australia for $15 when for the same price you can buy the DVD from the US and it’s released months before the movie is even in cinemas here?
Of course, things like world-wide releases of big movies (Spider-man 3 being case in point) and the proliferation of internet piracy have changed this, but haven’t changed the fact that DVD region coding still exists.
Luckily, in Australia, good sense prevailed. The ACCC encouraged the government to think that region-locked DVD players were anti-competitive, and that Australians should be able to watch DVDs from anywhere in the world. So, since then, it’s rare to find Region 4-only players in the shops. And even if they’re set to Region 4 originally, changing them via codes on your remote (as you have done) is not illegal in Australia. It’s also perfectly legal for us (as individuals) to purchase DVDs from overseas to be shipped here, as we have done with ‘Hogfather’, and I’ve done with many other Region 1 & 2 DVDs.
However, it’s technically not legal for a shop to sell non-Region 4 DVDs in Australia, due to the copyright holders/licensees being different in different countries. Which is why shops like Minotaur got raided (I think I remember reading that…)
In any case, it’s all good. I haven’t had a chance to look at my Hogfather DVD yet (apart from the pretty packaging and the spellbook page – which includes a fair bit of Hebrew writing which I can vaguely read but it’s not real words or anything!) but will hopefully have a chance to play around with it on the weekend.
