can someone explain why region lock is a thing for films

[Mark Kaine]

4 minutes ago, Erioch said:

Maybe read through the list I posted. 

What you posted is exactly why you can't buy certain games on Steam for example,  but that doesn't mean its actually illegal,  it just means Steam or publishers dont want to take the risks, because its uncertain if it would be against any current regulations. 

 

However,  what does this have to do with region locked *movies* at all, i dont get the point you're trying to make?

[Erioch]

5 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

However,  what does this have to do with region locked *movies* at all, i dont get the point you're trying to make?

"then why are games not region locked?"

 

I guess you forgot what you posted a while back.

[LogicalDrm]

So most who replied here don't have any clue how things work, but answer bs anyway. Great. As noted by @Caroline and @LAwLz, the reason is purely money. At least currently, in 90s it was hardware difference. Now movie rights (as well as sports broadcasts, tv series and such) are sold per country or bigger area and to highest bidder. So its likely, besides something still being in movies, that Amazon is not the one that has broadcasting rights in UK. Could be Netflix, could be HBO. Which doesn't exclude Amazon from selling it as physical copy and rights could be even split between streaming service and broadcasting company (of UK ones only Dave comes to mind).

 

This is really annoying, and before streaming revolution was a much wider thing, it was the main reason for piracy. Could still be since fragmenting of content is not what consumers want. But as long as consumers don't say its enough to pay for 5 different streaming service for that one exclusive content, and as long as selling something as exclusive content will make more money to production company, this will remain as is.

[Neroon]

21 hours ago, Poinkachu said:

Well, you pay on US prime and you can watch it with as much people you can cram into the room.
At cinema, you pay per person.

 

Now idk if there's some concession or whatever between cinema and movie makers, never got curious enough about it to do research.
But yeah, opening streaming too early can also means angry cinema owners. What kinda downside for the movie makers that will bring, idk.

I don't even think that's the biggest issue. Sure it can happen, but I think most of the time it will be like 2 watching. Obviously that's half the money, but on the other hand, they make more on renting it out, then watching it in a theater.

However, the big difference, is that in theaters people buy drinks, consumptions etc, this is what they make tons of money on.

[Poinkachu]

1 hour ago, Neroon said:

I don't even think that's the biggest issue. Sure it can happen, but I think most of the time it will be like 2 watching. Obviously that's half the money, but on the other hand, they make more on renting it out, then watching it in a theater.

However, the big difference, is that in theaters people buy drinks, consumptions etc, this is what they make tons of money on.

Well, if it's my country, I can bet my two eyes that there will be a lot that watches it in the same room.

While some other will record the stream and then spread it.

[Neroon]

8 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

Well, if it's my country, I can bet my two eyes that there will be a lot that watches it in the same room.

While some other will record the stream and then spread it.

I don't know where you are from, but do you have a thinking why it would be a lot in your country, and do you think it would be less in other countries?

[Poinkachu]

46 minutes ago, Neroon said:

do you have a thinking why it would be a lot in your country

I do. My family alone would at most pay two for a minimum 10 people. And that's only because my sis family live kinda far from my brother's.

If it's the family of a friend, they'll organize their usual family & friends gathering, and pay 1 for like atleast 25. I mean, they do have a projector & a giant house & a pool .

 

And this is the same big family that were willing to book an entire premiere type cinema room just so their family & extended family can watch it at the same time. If the goal can be achieved cheaper, why not I guess.

 

Basically, for some it's poorness, for some other it's thriftiness, for some other it's a combination of both.

That's why AFAIK so far there is no movie streaming like Prime (Like, for newly released movie) here.

 

Quote

do you think it would be less in other countries?

IMHO, that depends on the country

[Blue4130]

3 hours ago, Neroon said:

.

However, the big difference, is that in theaters people buy drinks, consumptions etc, this is what they make tons of money on.

The movie studios don't get money from the sales of snacks, that goes to the theater itself who has no control over region locks.

[Neroon]

15 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

The movie studios don't get money from the sales of snacks, that goes to the theater itself who has no control over region locks.

Are you saying that these movie theaters get to show the movies for free?

 

Also have you seen all the limited edition stuff they sell customers, like the latest spiderverse movie, had these popcorn baskets in spidey style.

 

So yes, they absolutely make a ton of money through theaters.

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, Neroon said:

Are you saying that these movie theaters get to show the movies for free?

 

Also have you seen all the limited edition stuff they sell customers, like the latest spiderverse movie, had these popcorn baskets in spidey style.

 

So yes, they absolutely make a ton of money through theaters.

No, reread what I said. The studio doesn't get money from the sale of popcorn. The theater gets the money from snacks.

 

Of course the studio gets a cut of ticket sales.

[Sauron]

On 6/9/2023 at 10:08 PM, CatXice said:

literally all governments in the world need throwing out and rebuilding with tradesman the world would run 100x better 

On 6/9/2023 at 10:00 PM, Erioch said:

Politics.

This has nothing to do with politics or governments, except for the fact that politics and governments allow the existence of copyright. It's publishers that want full control on distribution of their movies and region locking is a symptom of that. They want to distribute media at different prices in different areas and if they can't get a deal that satisfies them in a given region they just don't release the piece of media there.

[Poinkachu]

A friend sent me a message on Whatsapp this morning,

"Yo, wanna come to my place and watch Fast X? just web version tho"

 

No streaming service for newly released movie here, soo... I probably can guess where did he get it, and I wonder what streaming service it got ripped from.

[wanderingfool2]

23 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

So most who replied here don't have any clue how things work, but answer bs anyway. Great. As noted by @Caroline and @LAwLz, the reason is purely money. At least currently, in 90s it was hardware difference. Now movie rights (as well as sports broadcasts, tv series and such) are sold per country or bigger area and to highest bidder. So its likely, besides something still being in movies, that Amazon is not the one that has broadcasting rights in UK. Could be Netflix, could be HBO. Which doesn't exclude Amazon from selling it as physical copy and rights could be even split between streaming service and broadcasting company (of UK ones only Dave comes to mind).

While I do think that money is a driving factor, I do think the reasoning given by a decent amount of people was still partially correct (just maybe dated).

 

If it was purely about money, then we wouldn't have seen it as much for blockbusters in theatres; and especially when cam recordings started becoming a thing.

 

A key example of the dubbing example, Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone.  The US got the release nearly a week after the UK did, at the time  it would be hard pressed to argue that it was just about the money or even hardware differences.  One key difference is they re-cut the film to use sorcerer instead of philosopher; which iirc was the attributed to the film getting a later US release (the other films got the same time releases)

 

It is also true that you get "politics" in the way, in the sense that different countries different laws.  Japanese animes for example get slightly tweaked for each region they are released in due to either regional differences or differences in terms of law.  I'm going from memory, but I seem to recall that Canadian smoking laws in regards to actors/characters smoking has a lot more guidelines around them.

 

I'd also say broadcasting rights, while monetizable, parts of it do run into local laws which essentially makes it more profitable to sell the distribution rights to more local companies.

[Neroon]

2 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

No, reread what I said. The studio doesn't get money from the sale of popcorn. The theater gets the money from snacks.

 

Of course the studio gets a cut of ticket sales.

Do you understand how business works? This whole thread is about region locks, this very discussion is about companies paying to have a movie on their platform for renting.

 

Movie theaters need movies to function, studios have deals with theaters, that's more than just a piece of the ticket.

I didn't say they take a percentage of the popcorn, I said there is a lot of money in that, and some of that money will end up with the studios.

[LogicalDrm]

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

If it was purely about money, then we wouldn't have seen it as much for blockbusters in theatres; and especially when cam recordings started becoming a thing.

 

A key example of the dubbing example, Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone.  The US got the release nearly a week after the UK did, at the time  it would be hard pressed to argue that it was just about the money or even hardware differences.  One key difference is they re-cut the film to use sorcerer instead of philosopher; which iirc was the attributed to the film getting a later US release (the other films got the same time releases)

IIRC that was because of some copyright issues. Which have been reasons for why games, books and other media is released with another name in different regions. Considering how long it takes movies to come to release after filming has been done, making such different release feels more about making waves and impact than something else.

 

In fact, just reading some stats/numbers. It was the publisher for US release of the book who changed the name. 2 years before movie release. So thats unlikely to be big key on why release dates are 6 days apart. I would count more on hype, not even dubbing, since its already in English.

 

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It is also true that you get "politics" in the way, in the sense that different countries different laws.  Japanese animes for example get slightly tweaked for each region they are released in due to either regional differences or differences in terms of law.  I'm going from memory, but I seem to recall that Canadian smoking laws in regards to actors/characters smoking has a lot more guidelines around them.

 

I'd also say broadcasting rights, while monetizable, parts of it do run into local laws which essentially makes it more profitable to sell the distribution rights to more local companies.

How much of that is actual politics of what people here know... I doubt those who brought it up were thinking about whether US allow swearing in TV or whether certain imagery and themes are seen suitable by local censorship officials. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be. Its seen more with games than with films, mainly as I think with films producer and director will make calculated risk to make something that goes hard against mainstream and only ever could reach cult following.

 

What I was mainly referring by saying its not about politics was its not about current style geopolitics where you see categorical bans for everything made in certain areas.

 

7 hours ago, Neroon said:

Are you saying that these movie theaters get to show the movies for free?

 

Also have you seen all the limited edition stuff they sell customers, like the latest spiderverse movie, had these popcorn baskets in spidey style.

 

So yes, they absolutely make a ton of money through theaters.

By ticket sales... With massive overhead currently. Besides, production companies sell rights to distributors, who then resell those rights to individual theaters or chains. I remember reading somewhere that its common to have base price plus some percentage for any profits made. But that all would be from direct profits only. As in seats/tickets sold to see some particular film.

 

So, not by selling snacks where they are paying producers to buy materials.

[Thaldor]

On 6/11/2023 at 2:50 PM, Mark Kaine said:

then why are games not region locked? 

Oh, they are. Probably more today than than they were even then when there was some actual reasons for them to be region locked.

 

Back in the day of CRT TV's games were basicly region locked because CRT technology. NTSC vs. PAL vs. SECAM and then their happy little unwanted children born in countries which just couldn't be trying to be special care children (like PAL-M in Brazil which was kind of retarded kid of NTSC and PAL with being PAL but 60Hz which messes up all the fancy pansy math behind adding colours to TV broadcasts). This time games also were region locked effectively because all games were needed to run on the different systems with different specs, the biggest one being PAL 25Hz vs. NTSC 30Hz and now you know where the 30FPS thing comes from.

Mainly from the used marked you are going to find NTSC, PAL and NTSC-J (JPY) [Japan with also often whole different consoles and other odd stuff going on, basicly NTSC but with it's own spices] games because for some reason those are the most populous areas with people enough spare money to buy games. These go effectively all the way from the Atari times to about around Dreamcast/PS2 generation when the world was split into even more regions, mainly NTSC-C for China.

 

Of course not all went with the same schemes, well... Nintedo wasn't happy so they have had pretty much always NTSC, PAL-A, PAL-B and Asia regions ever since NES. Controlling happening initially by different consoles (Famicon for Japan and NES for rest of the world) with NES having also NES10 chip which was encoded by region (mainly to differentiate PAL-A from PAL-B and NTSC from Asia). SNES was more interesting with 3 quite different consoles being launched: Super Famicom, SNES PAL and SNES NTSC regions with even different game cartridges (and also NES10 chip to keep dirty people from importing games from different regions because "REEEeeeee...!"), Super Famicom and SNES PAL being pretty much same with the difference that Super Famicom supports NTSC-J and SNES PAL (surprise) PAL and then US got the special care children who was pretty much dropped after birth.

 

Xbox was the first console to use DRM to region lock games, as in there wasn't any hardware cause for a game bought from US to run on EU bought console but that was done with software. PS3 was marketed as region free but had systems set up so game publishers could and did region lock their games. And that basicly started the modern era with digital schemes splitting the world into regions smaller and more numerous than ever before. Be it mostly because even within EU someone from Bulgaria simply couldn't afford Nordic game prices (average net income per month in Bulgaria is around 773€ while Finland it's 2,5k€ and Denmark 4,2k€ with Sweden and Norway in the middle with 3-3.5k€) so for Steam it is basicly currency based system where it is not direct exchange rate from one currency to other but recommended exchange rate which takes into consideration the wealth of the areas.

 

What this all means?

With Steam things are simple. You can change your region once in 3 months getting different regions currency and pricing, they do check your IP every time so better get that VPN running. You also cannot trade games between regions, this used to be a big thing, pretty much how Kinguin and other grey markets operated on the surface; Buying games from rubble or other extremely cheap region, putting some air on the price and selling them to the expensive regions like Euro (EUR1 if we are strict, EUR is splitted into smaller areas) and USD.

And yes, pretty much same is going on with Epic Game Browser and other platforms to varying degrees. Even GoG has some region locking in form of different pricing for different currencies and some games not available on some regions but these are more about not having the censored versions of the games (good job Germany, basicly beer and drunken intercourse festival at the autumn is cultural heritage fitting for everyone but "OH MY LEDERHOSEN, IS THAT RED BLUT! Das ist not good für anyone!").

[Gork]

So once a uh-pun-uh-time that wasn't a thing. then sony(?) said: let their be  DVD's, you can now avoid the hastle of of backing up your favorite tape, and watch it with a free pounding headache getting it to just work. And so it was. Then a dude from up the block "fixed" his DVD player, soon we could all enjoy star trek in glorius 640x480 but now with more colors, and a fan eddit of  starwars with well made computer animals. and life was good. but the meen pouty villaians of the MPAA yelled: where is our proffit after everyone yelled: Who is you?  and not all was well.  so other places thought people needed a headache and movie stars more billions. So it is now: a pointless extra pile of gold. Find your favorite linux iso's a extended trailer of your movies might be included.

[Neroon]

13 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

By ticket sales... With massive overhead currently. Besides, production companies sell rights to distributors, who then resell those rights to individual theaters or chains. I remember reading somewhere that its common to have base price plus some percentage for any profits made. But that all would be from direct profits only. As in seats/tickets sold to see some particular film.

 

So, not by selling snacks where they are paying producers to buy materials.

And the bottom line is still, that movies make a lot through theaters, because of food and drinks. The movie theater industry already has trouble staying afloat, and without food and drinks, they couldn't afford to pay for the rights, and theaters would close, or the movie companies cut would just reduce dramatically. 

[starsmine]

Distribution deals and licensing deals

I want to sell a movie to Thailand, I have no idea how the market there works, its laws, and worse case, censorship. I contract out a distributor to handle it. Part of that contract is They have the right to sell there with out me competing with them, and vice versa. As in I cant be having it cheaper to import the movie from the US and screw them over and I cant have it cheaper to import the movie from Thailand to the US and have it eat into my market deals with target/walmart/amazon here. 

Politics plays a role, as well as free trade agreements. Theater roll outs plays a roll, etc etc. 

Its just a tool for Creators to protect their IP and have healthy business relationships. 

[LogicalDrm]

52 minutes ago, Neroon said:

And the bottom line is still, that movies make a lot through theaters, because of food and drinks. The movie theater industry already has trouble staying afloat, and without food and drinks, they couldn't afford to pay for the rights, and theaters would close, or the movie companies cut would just reduce dramatically. 

Theaters maybe. But not production companies. Or do you go to theaters just to buy snacks and drinks, but not to see movies? The latter part of argument is just poor. Ticket overhead is there to make profit on licensing. The running costs are the bigger issue. And why overhead is added to your popcorn, not just to ticket price.

 

And we are talking about why production companies sell rights per region. Just to keep this on track.

[Lomac]

On 6/9/2023 at 1:20 PM, Neroon said:

It's always about deals per region.

 

 

Pretty much this. Theaters in the UK may have negotiated a longer exclusivity contract with Universal Pictures, creating a longer delay before it hits streaming companies. That said, I did see something about Fast X being available through the Sky Store, but not sure if that's only a presale for physical release or if it's actually available to be streamed.

[Neroon]

6 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

Theaters maybe. But not production companies. Or do you go to theaters just to buy snacks and drinks, but not to see movies? The latter part of argument is just poor. Ticket overhead is there to make profit on licensing. The running costs are the bigger issue. And why overhead is added to your popcorn, not just to ticket price.

 

And we are talking about why production companies sell rights per region. Just to keep this on track.

Theaters are part of those regional deals. Depending how much theaters want to pay, it can heavily impact when they are available for renting. During Covid this was an especially hot item. Movies that did get released, were often released straight on like Disney+, while in some countries, theaters were open.

 

You obviously don't go to theaters to just buy food and drinks. But none of that was my point. My point was that theaters are great for releasing your movies in, because aside from tickets, a lot is made through food and drinks, incl merch for some movies.

 

When you rent a movie, there is only the price for renting. So if Amazon wants the rights to rent a movie out, all that money needs to made back through renting it out. In theaters tickets are only a piece of the pie, and thus movie companies can make more through it.

[Heliian]

It could be as simple as the UK outlet has other top billers that they don't want overshadowed by the release of such cinematic excellence. 

[wanderingfool2]

23 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

In fact, just reading some stats/numbers. It was the publisher for US release of the book who changed the name. 2 years before movie release. So thats unlikely to be big key on why release dates are 6 days apart. I would count more on hype, not even dubbing, since its already in English.

They specifically filmed some of the scenes multiple times using different words (for the other movies they didn't).  While one could say hype it wouldn't make sense having just the first movie delayed while having the rest remain the same.  While not likely the entire reason, I'm betting the recutting would have taken up extra time and resources (which might delay the master getting finished...like finish the british one then finish the american one as you would likely have a few people handling that portion of it).  In those days it was literal film they were filming on so there was additional processes required when creating 2 versions.

 

9 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

Theaters maybe. But not production companies. Or do you go to theaters just to buy snacks and drinks, but not to see movies? The latter part of argument is just poor. Ticket overhead is there to make profit on licensing. The running costs are the bigger issue. And why overhead is added to your popcorn, not just to ticket price.

 

And we are talking about why production companies sell rights per region. Just to keep this on track.

Disney apparently demanded 60% of the revenue for the movie.

[LogicalDrm]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

They specifically filmed some of the scenes multiple times using different words (for the other movies they didn't).  While one could say hype it wouldn't make sense having just the first movie delayed while having the rest remain the same.  While not likely the entire reason, I'm betting the recutting would have taken up extra time and resources (which might delay the master getting finished...like finish the british one then finish the american one as you would likely have a few people handling that portion of it).  In those days it was literal film they were filming on so there was additional processes required when creating 2 versions.

Is this more of what you think happened or based on facts. I know that I have completely different view, but sounds like this is bit reaching explanation. Peter Jackson made Lord of the Rings trilogy by filming all 3 movies at the same time. Why wouldn't Warner Bros etc., knowing it was done at the same time they were filming Potter, do those scenes at the same time knowing they needed to be altered anyway? Also, why wouldn't they cut both versions at the same time? And its still 6 days between release dates. If it would be because of extra filming and cutting that is the reason, wouldn't you think it would take bit longer? Like a month?

 

I can accept that reasoning for movies where release date is significantly apart, and attribute that to different mainstream norms (cutting out extreme violence for example). But here it doesn't seem to be even plausible reasoning.