I got myself an HD-DVD add-on for my 360 this weekend because i could get it rather cheaply. It came with 2 free movies but i'd like to expand on that collection. Over here prices for HD-DVD movies are insaine at a good 30+ euro's so i was concidering buying some online from the states. My problem is, according to the standard for HD-DVD it's regionfree hardware and from what i've been told so where all first gen movies for it however i've heared some studios started adding region coding. My question is, does anyone have a HD-DVD player and experience with movies and can tell me if there is regional coding going on or not before i splash out on movies that won't work on my unit.
The HD-DVD forum/alliance/1337 coalition cocked out and decided to enable regions for its format. Basically, the North American region, Japan, and some other countries get REGION A. Most of Europe and Australia get REGION B. China, India, Russia and eastern bloc get REGION C. Translation: All the cool shit (objective, whatever) comes out in REGION A whilst REGION B and REGION C are labeled second tier and shit tier respectively. Of course, it's mostly for economic reasons.. but I don't see why Europe and Australia couldn't fall into REGION A at that. In the end, the consumer still loses.. although maybe less depending on where you live. (I'm happy that I can at least import HD-DVD from Japan knowing it'll play here.. sucks for someone in UK though. )
I was under the impression that HD-DVD was (and still is) entirely region free. And infact, the regions 1080Peter's describing (and terms used for them) are that of the BluRay format. No, there is no region encoding for HD-DVD. Importing is still a perfectly fine thumbs up for that format. (There are actually stores that specializes in HD-DVD and tracking down country specific releases of various movies that are exclusive to BR in other regions)
But I tried to play a NTSC Region 1 DVD in my UK HD-DVD and it said not recognised or something similar
thats becouse its a DVD, there is no HD DVD region-coding... but there is DVD region coding. So a UK HD DVD add-on has no HD DVD region coding, but a region 2 DVD code!
Thought that would be the case, but thought MS may have made it totally region free even for dvd`s......
Ah, whoops! That's right... HD-DVD has no region coding.. It's Blu-ray. :banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead:
I'd wait about... 3 years or 2years. By then one format should be successful and greymarket hardware should solidify by that time.
