Media Reports

Region Code Blue
By Barry Fox
Multimedia Manufacturer, May/June 2006

Regional Coding

The music world has so far been spared the misery of regional coding, the much-hated system that is designed to stop a DVD, and even a PSP portable PlayStation disc, playing in another country. Because blue laser will offer the highest resolution audio yet, with more channels than ever before, there is a risk that any regional coding used by blue laser will start to obstruct music releasing as well as movies.

DVD’s regional coding was so sloppily engineered, as an afterthought to the world standard DVD format, that it was easily hacked. Almost all DVD players sold in Europe can be modified with a few key-presses on the remote to play American discs. Both the blue laser systems will use the same military strength encryption system called AACS (Advanced Access Content System) to stop copying. If this is also used to control regional coding there will be no hope of a hack. Discs bought in one country will be 100% unplayable in others.

The awful warning here comes from the PSP, which uses much tougher regional coding technology than DVD. Buy a PSP disc on holiday and there is a good chance it will not play on your player.

At CES in Las Vegas both the Blu-ray and HD-DVD camps were promising to launch this spring or summer and both said separately that they could only hope that there will be no regional coding, and if there is, it will not be tied to AACS.

When I visited Sony in Tokyo in February, the company admitted that important issues are “still under discussion.” There was still no decision yet on whether Blu-ray discs and players will be regionally coded; and there was no firm policy on whether players will have analog component outputs for connection to the many TV screens which do not have HDMI digital inputs.

This is not the fault of Sony or Philips for Blu-ray, or Toshiba for HD-DVD. They are all at the mercy of the AACS licensing administration body which controls the vital protection system. And AACS still continues to behave like the CIA, with e-mails to the AACS Comments address as “undeliverable” and the press contact named by AACS, Betsy Damus of Edelman PR, saying only: “I am not an AACS spokesperson.”
At CES I asked both blue laser factions about this lack of communication, and later got back the worrying confirmation that: “Unfortunately, they (AACS) were not able to confirm who the appropriate contact is at this time, but noted that all inquiries should be directed to the AACS site—please follow up directly with the press contacts noted on the AACS site (www.aacsla.com/press/).”

SOLUTION?
Recent patent filings give an interesting insight into the kind of regional control which we may see embedded into Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

Noriko Sugimoto of Japan, and Yusuke Shimizu and Masayuki Kozuka of California lament the plight of Japanese businessmen who work in America, build a treasured collection of movie discs and then return to Japan where they find regional coding stops the discs playing on Japanese players. “This gives a bad impression,” they say in US patent filing 2005/0198115.

The patent then describes a way of solving the “bad impression” problem. Although the new system could probably be made to work, it seems hideously complicated.

Blue laser discs and players will be regionally coded in exactly the same way as now, to help make new players compatible with old DVDs. When a disc is loaded, the player checks the codes and if they match, for instance a Region 2 player sees a Region 2 disc, the movie plays.
If the codes do not match, and the Region 2 player sees a Region 1 disc, playback is halted. The owner is then offered the opportunity to connect the player to a phone line and access a control center. The control checks the disc title and date of release against a database for the country where the owner is trying to play the disc. If the database shows that the movie has been released in the new country, the player downloads clearance codes which are stored in an SD memory card. The disc now plays in the “wrong region” player.

The downloaded codes can also alter the way some sequences of the disc are played, for instance to skip scenes which have been banned by the local censor. Subtitles can be changed to the local language, too.

Because the update codes are stored in SD memory card the disc can be played again in the same “wrong region,” without the need to go online each time.

One obvious difficulty is that the system relies on online access, and not everyone wants to connect a home disc player to a phone line—or they may not be able to connect a portable player while traveling. So another option is to supply pre-coded SD memory cards, to go with discs, or use a system like AACS to update regional code controls while discs are playing. The added complexity and hassle could become just another reason not to buy a blue laser system.

SONY’S RETURN TO FORM
Over-engineering a system can cripple it. That’s what happened to Sony’s digital Walkman players. While Apple scooped the pool with the simple-to-use iPod, Sony locked Mini Disc and MP3 players to the user-hostile Digital Rights Management system called MagicGate.

Sony’s corporate spokesman in Japan, Kei Sakaguchi, now admits: “We lagged behind on the user interface. We honored copy protection very heavily. But usability was not so good.”

In a pragmatic move Sony has created a new concept to cater to lost customers who replaced their cassette Sony Walkman players with Apple iPods. Cradle Audio is a small docking station that houses a digital amplifier and two tiny speakers. A separate power unit also acts as a subwoofer. The cradle docks with a Sony Ericsson phone or connects with an iPod by analog line socket cable. It also streams music round the house by WiFi.

A 600W version of the amplifier module is used in the SCD-DR1 SACD/CD player and TAD-DR1A amplifier that costs a cool £12,000. The player is unique because it goes back at least ten years in design. Whereas modern CD players use a moving laser to track the disc, the DR1 optics are fixed and stationary; the spinning disc is moved instead.

Perhaps most refreshing was Sony’s decision to demonstrate its high end audio systems in stereo rather than surround and with competitors’ loudspeakers—B&W 800s.

Eric Kingdon, the UK’s Technical Marketing Manager, explained: “I pushed to do a two channel demonstration, to remind that Sony has always been serious about high end audio. The player has a multi-channel output but we are using stereo. And we are using B&W speakers. That way we take the speaker issue out of it. We can concentrate on listening to the Sony disc player and amplifier.”

That is not something that anyone in Sony would have dared to say before new boss Howard Stringer took over the reins.

Barry Fox reports on the audio industry as columnist for the British publication Hi-Fi News. His commentary also appears in every issue of Multi Media Manufacturer.

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