A VC - Latest Comments in Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

henrikjacobsen — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:48:37 -0000

It is because in the US and Japan you use the TV signal code called NTSC, while the rest of the world use the format PAL. If you have one that use the latter you can only use PAL dvd's vice versa.
If you want to stream on the Internet though, and dont want to download alot, just use tvshack.net

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

duke — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 10:38:31 -0000

For older episodes (like the first season of Heroes), I find eMule to be much better than torrents. Go to a site like: http://tvunderground.org.ru...

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

Stephe Wilks — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 23:09:44 -0000

Ooops - while the point remains for my younger child's GameBoy, Andreas is right in his comment about this - and, in fact Sony has gone one better.

*All* PS3 games, as well as the Nintendo DS lite games are region free! The console still supports region encoding for BluRay and DVD of course, but we were educated today by a very helpful game store employee (and have since verified with a bit more research) that the englightend Sony folk allow cross-region game acquisition. Shows just how bad asumptions can be... Sorry Sony!

[and Cooper is a very happy young man this morning, with a shiny new copy of Ratchet & Clank to take home!]

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

fewquid — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:02:47 -0000

Fred,
I feel your pain. I grew up in the UK and regularly bring DVD's back to the US. What drives me crazy is that the stuff I buy isn't even available over here (English comedians mostly). You can download VLC Player for free from http://www.videolan.org/ -- it completely overrides the region settings on your Mac's hardware so you can watch any DVD without changing the region code of your DVD drive. On the PC, I use DVD RegionFree (http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-.... It tricks media player into playing any region DVDs and works quite well. Sadly, it's not free.
Hope that helps!

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

mattmaroon — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:30:02 -0000

Really? Just search isohunt, take the one with the most seeds.

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

Ravi — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:45:01 -0000

This is why i prefer VLC player. It ignores region settings.

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

andreas — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:33:52 -0000

I don't know but legality aside, I still find Bittorrent to cumbersome.
It's hard to obtain a good torrent.

Andreas

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

andreas — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:31:36 -0000

It shouldn't be difficult to 'hack' your DVD player.

I have a region-free player now, but I remember that it was extremely easy to render my previous player region-free by pressing buttons in a certain sequence.

Andreas

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

David — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:23:15 -0000

Most DVD players are sold region free in Australia - that is with the region DRM disabled. Australians tend to take a sensible approach to DRM (circumvention).

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

andreas — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:15:51 -0000

Stephe,

Your kids might be happy to know that this does not apply to Handheld Console Games, aka. Nintendo DS & PSP; only to Home Consoles.

Andreas

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

Jay Jamison — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 02:22:31 -0000

Hi Fred,

Enjoy the blog. I lived in Tokyo for 3 years, working for MSFT (now living in Palo Alto and an entrepreneur, which is how I found your blog). While in Japan, we solved this silly problem by having me build a PC with two DVD bays--one set to the US, one set to Japan. Crazy, and I'll look forward to seeing this get fixed or overrun as time goes on.

All my best.

Jay

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

Aruni S. Gunasegaram — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 23:45:23 -0000

Love the show Heroes although the first seasons have been better than the last one. I'm hoping for some better shows but given the writer's strike who knows when that will be. I love sci-fi so I still enjoy watching old Star Trek episodes. Still wondering if/when Battlestar Galactica will come back. We have family in Mexico so we know about the DVD issue. I think it's meant to deter illegal copying and distribution..

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

dick costolo — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:19:10 -0000

Less funny, more ridiculous.

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

markslater — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:37:43 -0000

i received the season 4 of shameless this holiday and got unsupported region blue screen of death nonsense. I jumped on ebay and picked up an all region player for $70 bux. absurd.

I reccomend shameless BTW (prolly not for the kids) but if you like dry mancunian humor about a completely derelict family (think darker than royle family) you will love it.

best for the year.

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

Stephen L. McKay — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:12:27 -0000

Yea, but I'll still bet on your kids!

Steve

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

fredwilson — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:58:02 -0000

Who knows

That was more about their generation than my kids in particular

fred

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

Stephen L. McKay — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:53:59 -0000

Fred,

And they will (run such businesses, or run other very profitable concerns that benifit us all)!

No doubt, the apples don't fall far from the tree!

Steve

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

Stephen L. McKay — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:35:12 -0000

Fred,
Glad you and fam. had a GREAT trip!
Sounds like jetlag to me. It will disapate over the next few hours (you sure wrote a lot since landing!). If your like me, the internal clock will chime, you will hit the sack, and you will be at the office by nine.
Great appreciation for your take on Josh's view. He sounds like me at his age (curious, but also outspoken). Without the two, we don't learn.

All the best, and Welcome Home!

Steve

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

vruz — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:30:53 -0000

kind of silly, but also interesting how new market niches are created to compensate for corporate stupidity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

will they never learn ?

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

fredwilson — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:28:02 -0000

That happened to my kids in australia

When they went to watch their shows on the internet, they couldn't because
of an australian ip address

When they are 40 and running entertainment companies, I promise you it won't
work like that!

fred

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

fredwilson — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:15:02 -0000

Yup.

I figure we've used up one of them with Australia

But its five times better than our DVD player

fred

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

mattmaroon — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:19:11 -0000

Yet another reason to just download all of your favorite TV shows via Bittorrent.

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

Martin Gordon — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:17:57 -0000

I had a similar experience when I went to South Africa last month. I wanted to get caught up with my TV shows, but NBC and ABC would have nothing to do with my South African IP address. Even more ridiculous was that I couldn't watch anything via Netflix despite paying for it with my US credit card and having my movies shipped to a US address (in other words, I'm clearly American). BitTorrent, on the other hand, works the same everywhere, and that's where I was forced to go to get my TV shows.

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

Stephe Wilks — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:15:45 -0000

And, of course, the converse applies - we're travelling *from* Sydney to the US at the moment, and making the obligatory side trip into the odd mall or two.

My boys look at the DVDs and struggle to comprehend why they're not allowed to buy the legitimate product they see before them, to play on their legitimate DVD player "back home"...

But, it gets worse when I have to explain that the same prohibitions apply to their PS3 and Nintendo DS games. The "internet" generation was struggling already with the 'old media' thinking on the DVDs, but - to the extent that they have a small exposure to game machines like the PS3 - it's even harder to explain why anyone would want prevent purchase of legitimate product!

But, I get to do RIAA jokes - which is always worthwhile...

Re: Kind Of Funny, Kind Of Ridiculous

andreas — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:59:32 -0000

Hi Fred,

Great to hear you enjoyed your trip Down Under (I'm in Perth.)

How did you overcome the Mac Mini's DVD Player 'Region Control', which is rather silly as well?
All my Macs DVD Players let me change the regional setting only five times in the past. Then they would lock me down.

Andreas