West Wing R2-April 8th (1 Viewer)

[RyanRogers]

Here is a link describing the release of the first half of the first season of The West Wing in R2.
The article mentions that Warner Brothers may encode DVDs to not play in region free players. Are the players described in this forum (Malata, JVC) considered region free players or does this only apply to the Daewoo or Apex type of players? http://westwing.bewarne.com/materials/videosdvd.html

 

[Christopher D]

What they're talking about is called RCE -- I believe it stands for "Region Code Enhancement". Essentially, the disc won't play on a multi-region or Region 0 machine -- it has to be in a machine set to its own region, in this case Region 2.

You can find a lot more RCE info with a search here -- I believe Warners has backed off of it recently, and I *thought* they only did it in Region 1.

In any event, a Malata can be set to read as a Region 2 machine instead of a Region 0 machine, so I'm pretty confident it will work for this.

There are so many TV releases coming out in R2 now that are unavailable in R1 that I wouldn't be surprised if rightsholders started taking a harder look at using RCE or some other attempt at region protection.

 

[RyanRogers]

Thanks for the info. The Malata machine is looking like a good buy for all these R2 TV releases.