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Work Around Rival DVD Formats By Looking Abroad

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By SARAH McBRIDE The Wall Street Journal

Published: October 20, 2007

Some savvy consumers are looking overseas for a way to take some of the risk out of buying a next-generation DVD player.

Many movie lovers have said they are reluctant to buy one of the new high-definition movie players because of a format war pitting two incompatible technologies against each other.

As the battle has unfolded, some studios have made deals to exclusively distribute their titles in one format or the other.

Sony Pictures, for example, releases high-definition titles only in the Blu-ray format, which parent Sony Corp. developed. General Electric Co.'s Universal Pictures, however, releases high-definition movies only in the rival HD DVD format.

Clever movie buffs have discovered a workaround: Several dozen titles out in the United States exclusively on Blu-ray are available overseas on HD DVD.

Studios such as Sony, News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney Co. tout their unswerving allegiance to Blu-ray stateside, but in other countries titles such as Sony's 'xXx,' Fox's 'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer' and Disney's 'The Prestige' are available on HD DVD.

No overseas travel is necessary to tap into this stream of alternative discs. A visit to a site such as amazon.co.uk does the trick, albeit typically at a higher price than in the United States.

For those reluctant to pay shipping costs from Europe or Asia or worried about currency conversions, gray-market U.S.-based sites such as xploitedcinema.com offer selections.

Distribution Loophole

The loophole lies in distribution. Studios often farm out DVD sales in other countries to a patchwork of companies with expertise in those markets. Those partner companies sometimes have arrangements to use a high-definition format different from that of the U.S. studio.

Often, a studio co-produces movies with a partner that retains rights for distribution in certain parts of the world.

Take the Sharon Stone classic 'Basic Instinct.'

One of Sony TriStar's co-producers was the French company Canal Plus, an HD DVD backer. Buy a French version of the DVD, turn off the dubbing, et voila - an HD DVD version of a movie that is available only on Blu-ray in this country.

For regular DVDs, studio restrictions known as region codes typically make a disc purchased in one part of the world unplayable on a DVD player purchased elsewhere.

Region codes (meant to protect varying release schedules in different countries) have become less important in recent years, however, and HD DVD doesn't have region codes, although Blu-ray does.

Some titles that come out exclusively on HD DVD in the United States come out on Blu-ray overseas, such as Universal Pictures' 'Bruce Almighty' and 'Hollywoodland,' but consumers must be sure they are buying from a region that works with U.S. players.

For Blu-ray, the United States is in the same region as almost all of the Americas and Southeast Asia.

Still, most major high-definition titles available overseas seem to reflect a switch to HD DVD, rather than the reverse.

Market 'Still In Relative Infancy'

It is too soon to say whether the availability of films from overseas will give a decisive edge to HD DVD, since relatively few consumers are tapping that market regularly.

'This odd dichotomy only helps reinforce the idea that the high-def market is still in its relative infancy,' says Paul Erickson, director of DVD and HD market research at NPD Group's DisplaySearch, an industry research company. 'The studios themselves are still watching, waiting and evaluating the market.'

The number of titles exclusive to a format, after overseas releases are factored in, is only about 190 each, he says.

Buying DVDs from overseas is generally legal.

'Anyone can lawfully purchase a single copy of a DVD from outside the U.S. if it is for private use and not for distribution,' says Owen Sloane, an entertainment lawyer at Berger Kahn in Los Angeles.

However, setting up a business based in the United States that sells these imports 'would be illegal from the get-go,' says Paul Supnik, a copyright and trademark lawyer in Beverly Hills, Calif.

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