Thursday, March 05, 2009

But Were They Region 2 DVDs?

The Obamas are receiving some flack on the other side of the Pond for showing the British Prime Minister and his wife a very muted reception. (Like others, I suspect "snow" was seized upon as an excuse so that the President could avoid a formal press conference sans teleprompter.)

The Obamas' gifts to the Browns are also being questioned. Although of course I'm a film fan, the choices of a DVD set and Marine One toys did seem rather...chintzy...compared to the very personal, unique gifts chosen by the Browns for the Obama family.

What I can't help particularly wondering: did the White House take into account regional DVD encoding and make sure the Browns were given DVDs which would play on UK DVD players? Hmmm.

March 19th Update: Confirmation: they were the incorrect region; the Prime Minister was sent home with Region 1 DVDs.

Good grief...

4 Comments:

Blogger NoirGirl said...

I wondered if the dodging of the press conference was because he couldn't use the teleprompter, too.

I hadn't heard about this gift thing. Goodness - chintzy doesn't even start to cover it. Any idea which collection was gifted? I think Warner Brothers may have a set like that.

I'd be interested in finding out if it was Region 2 coded, too.

12:42 PM  
Blogger mel said...

These days regions are not all that important as most people outside the US have multi-region DVD players that play all formats and also have multi-standard TV sets - bypassing the ridiculous restrictions initiated by the motion picture industry that were imposed at the beginning of the DVD era.

9:16 PM  
Blogger Jonas Nordin said...

I can confirm what Mel is saying. Being European, living in Europe, its actually very difficult to find a Region2 only DVD player. As no one will buy one of those the retailers have stopped selling them. Yay!

12:31 AM  
Blogger Laura said...

Mel and Jonas, thanks very much for sharing your personal experiences regarding the decline of the Region 2-only player. Very interesting info for us here in the States.

Best wishes,
Laura

9:08 AM  

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