Also, if you look at the global markets, they're all different. Just because Americans don't care so much about region-coding doesn't mean the rest of us don't. In NZ we get hardly any official local releases - many other countries, like say Portugal are in the same boat and have it even worse then us - and so we rely on the market of other countries. Now according to region-coding, we're supposed to share our market with "Australia, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America and the Caribbean". Parallel-Importing is legal, and so politicians decided (and rightly so) that region-coding was trying to restrict consumer choices when buying officially incensed movies. It was also seen as a way for them to control market prices, you just have to look at the prices of DVD's and CD's in brittain to see the effect of an anti-global-friendly-market. That's why region coding is now illegal. Why, according to region coding, is it okay to import DVD's from Australia and Mexico - but not okay to import them from Holland, Canada, Japan and China?

Also the AACS system worries me. It basically means that each time a key is leaked it becomes invalid - in other words, it won't be used on subsequent HD-DVD/Blu-Ray releases to combat piracy. Well fair enough, however what will happen is that new HD-DVD players and Blu-Ray players can have more keys then the first ones did, and so eventually once all the original keys have been cracked/leaked the current HD-DVD's or Blu-Ray DVD's being released will no longer be able to play on older machines!

As if that isn't bad enough, when hooked-up to your equipment you cannot watch it unless it takes the encrypted signal - and if it doesn't it'll be scaled down. Now I know people who bought HD-ready sets BEFORE this was implemented in them, as well as 2 people with home-movie-projectors (professional ones mounted to your roof with the three colour guns, not cheap lcd or data-projectors) that are also capable of HD but are not rated for AACS encryption. This would mean spending more thousands of dollars on replacing a perfectly good professional-grade projector to get one that takes the encrypted signal so you can watch 1080i - or else you'll just have to watch the scaled-down version. And by the way, yes it's expensive to replace the projector bulbs - but that's nothing compared to replacing an entire projector!

And it just keeps getting worse and worse.

I hope HVD or even DMD will be released to the home video format and be more consumer friendly.

Blu-Ray encryption goes even further - restricting even more the flexibility (or what's left of it) of use. If, 5 or 6 years from now, I have to choose between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, I believe I'd choose HD-DVD simply because it is a little more flexible then Blu-Ray. But I'm not happy with either, not in the least.

I won't be interested in a format that will not play on HD equipment my friends and family owns. I wouldn't support a format that doesn't support them. I won't be interested in a format that tries to force you to update your hardware just to watch their releases. I remember when people were rushing to buy HD-TV's before the AACS encryption was implemented – because they didn't want it in their TV. Someone will eventually build "digital signal stabilizers" like the analogue ones you can get that remove macrovision.