Up to 70 per cent of DVD players sold in Europe are 'chipped', making a mockery of industry attempts to control the market through hardware-embedded copyright restrictions. And by the next year, multi-region DVD players made in China and retailing for under 100, will be widely available, Jim Bottoms, of Understandings and Solutions, told delegates at this week's DVD Summit. Convergence was the buzzword at the conference, held in Dublin and now in its third year. Today, divergence is the reality, with the issue of regional encoding for DVDs a particularly thorny subject so far as European consumers are concerned.
Chipped players are single-region DVD players that have been modified to play all regions.
The term 'chipped' is becoming common parlance among European consumers and resellers alike. Software intended for the American market, it seems. On the floor, the general view was that regional coding would just go away, with many DVD producers currently opting for an all-region policy. The debate on this issue squarely blamed Hollywood for the fiasco that now prevails in Europe, such that imports of US DVD Region 1 releases are making up a significant total of overall sales. Another example of the US-Europe divide became evident whenever the Internet and its role with the connected DVD was discussed.