Two weekends ago, I paid my parents a visit. I needed to practice some driving, and they needed me to spruce up their computer and insult me on random transgressions in my life. (The first words my mother said to me was, “What’s wrong with your face?”) They recently saw the light and ditched AOL and switched to Sympatico DSL Basic, and needed help configuring their mail.
Oh, and the computer is a WindowsME machine. Oh joy.
While I was installing Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, my dad complained that he couldn’t play this Chinese mohgoung movies* on any of his DVD players or DVD drives. I explained to him the whole regioning copy protection the DVD manufacturers and moviemakers cooked up so that all the movies you buy in China (Region 6) or elsewhere wouldn’t play on a North American DVD player (Region 1), or vice versa.
He replied, “Hell, they are trying to stop me from playing movies I legitimately own with crippled DVD players? So now, not only have lost my DVD business, I’m not going to buy these expensive American DVD players either.” A friend of his had lent him an inexpensive, region-free Chinese-made DVD player.
No truer words have been spoken.
__*Mohgoung movies are popular Chinese films that feature acrobatic kungfu experts and soap opera plotlines in medieval settings. This one featured a woman that could cut piano wire by flinging a pebble and a bearded old guy who could smash swords with his cane in midair. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is of this genre.__