Nether Regions

DVD region coding is the kind of selfish, unnecessary evil that makes me feel just peachy about downloading movies for free off the internet. Simply put, there are six world DVD regions, and discs from one region won't play in DVD players from another. Thus, my legally purchased UK copy of the first season of The West Wing (Region 2) won't play in an Australian DVD player (Region 4). It (and pretty much the rest of my DVD collection) also won't play in Canadian players (Region 1), which is more important since that's the region of the world where I am right now. This isn't a technical problem like a NTSC/PAL format incompatibility either, it's a deliberate, craftily-engineered package of annoyance and pain, much like any album by Britney Spears.

As you might expect, multi-region players play discs from many regions, which solves this whole ridiculous problem. They're quite common in Asia and Australia, but finding one in Canada has been something of a trial. I thought I'd picked a winner with a Nova DV-D411 from Future Shop, but despite the salesperson's assurances, it just didn't work. So I took it back, and now I have a Daiwa DVD-6128 that I bought from London Drugs. It works perfectly (and even does karaoke), and despite the store's name, wasn't filled with high-grade cocaine.

Although I feel like the whole endeavour has ended in defeat for the forces of suit-clad corporate slime, I can't help but be reminded that the whole situation shouldn't have existed in the first place. Silly executive scumbags.