by guestblogger “Beardy”
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Before you read on, I strongly recommend BUY AUSTRALIAN (whenever possible).
If you buy overseas, you send money and jobs with the purchase, unless of course the product is manufactured exclusively overseas in the first place. In that case, shop “smart”.
Ok, we all know that DVD region encoding is an artificial block to enforce regional pricing. We also know that many DVD players can be made region-free to avoid the problem of having to own multiple DVD players to cover the regions that our DVDs come from.
So with the hassle, why buy overseas? Availability of titles, release dates, optional extras, etc, etc…
While NTSC region-1 disks (USA and Canada) tend to have the widest list of available titles and features, NTSC is not PAL (the Oz video standard). Ignoring the whole digital thing, there are still reasons to stick with PAL disks. Enter the UK as PAL and region-2. Makes a nice source for movies, not to mention frequently faster delivery than the USA.
Blu-Ray players that can be made region-free tend to be somewhat rare still, but mercifully they did not break the regions up as much (see first link). Even better, of the 3 regions, Oz and NZ are in the same region as the EU/UK! So no problem playing UK-sourced blu-ray disks in local players.
Still, why buy from the UK rather than locally ? As much as supporting your local industry is laudable, there are some serious discrepancies in pricing of these foreign-created disks. Since they are imported anyway, how come the local release is so slow and so expensive? Add to that the major annoyance that frequently the Oz importers do not being in everything or large quantities, eg: Van Helsing soundtrack CD, of which how many were brought into the country? According to one major retailer, only 100 physical disks were imported and fewer were ever distributed to stores.
So, the message is simple: Buy Australian (if possible), otherwise have a look at UK-based online sellers.
Oz/NZ/EU/UK all in region B for blu-ray
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc>
Example of price differential (delivered prices):
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/Van-Helsing-Blu-ray-Hugh-Jackman/dp/B001TDKLHO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1242603022&sr=8-1>
£12.98 (+shipping, GBP£3.58)
TTL: AUD$32.96 (GBP£16.56)
<http://www.bigwentertainment.com.au/product/van_helsing_3847516_188284.html>
AUD$35.96 (+shipping, AUD$4.50)
TTL: AUD$40.46
<http://www.ezydvd.com.au/item.zml/805834>
AU$39.97 (+shipping, AUD$1.50)
TTL: AUD$41.47