First for mac news, reviews and know-how
SEARCH FOR:   Advanced Search
Guest  Level 00    Register Log in

News 

[PSUs]
Friday 18th January 2008
Fox Digital Copy has region locks and time-limited availability 3:37AM, Friday 18th January 2008
Tuesday saw the release of Family Guy presents Blue Harvest on DVD. The Fox Digital Copy format became public knowledge even before Steve Jobs' keynote, as some consumers received pre-ordered DVDs early. Live Free and Die Hard (Die Hard 4.0 in the UK) also includes a digital copy.

The packaging for Live Free and Die Hard includes clear indication that the code that unlocks the digital copy has an expiry date, but it's tucked away on a sheet inside the Family Guy packaging. The date appears to be one year after the DVD's release date.

We tried the region 1 version of Family Guy with a UK iTunes Store account and found the accompanying digital copy is region locked.

Fox supplies the digital copies on a second disc - one for iTunes users and another for PlaysForSure devices, with a careful note in the small print that
 
 
ADVERTISEMENT
the Sony PSP and Microsoft Zune are currently unsupported. Such discs appear as devices in iTunes, and redirect to a dedicated page on the iTunes Store when clicked, where the user enters a code that's provided with the DVD. Attempting to authenticate the US version of Family Guy through a UK store account informed us that the code is only valid for store users in the US and Canada.

It's not much of a surprise that content is restricted in this way, but we're waiting for a response from Apple on the implications for countries that lie in the same DVD region, but are served by their own store. So whether a French digital copy can be authenticated using a UK account. If not, that would indicate that new language and subtitle track support on the iPhone and iPod touch are purely for feature parity between the iTunes Movie Rentals and DVD-Video formats.

The instructions for transferring the Windows Media copy show that, after checking the code is valid, the user is shown a list of attached devices that are eligible for transfer, but we are currently unable to test whether this recognises a PlaysForSure device's country of origin.

Submit to: Digg  |  Slashdot  |  Del.icio.us  |  Technorati

Related News


Humax F2-FOX T DVB-T
Box type: DVB-T, RF-modulator
Humax FOXSAT DVB-S/DVB-S2
Box type: DVB-S/DVB-S2