Does anybody else find it weird that US FOX region locks most catalog titles?

[steve_dave]

Why region coding exists:

1. To protect distribution deals.
- Ex. Braveheart is a Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox co-production. Paramount distributes in the US & Canada while Fox handles Latin America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Lets assume Paramount region locks their titles. Well, this protects Fox from losing money to imported titles authorized for sale in specific countries.

Now think for a moment that you own a well respected movie theater chain in the UK and the latest Disney movie, say Toy Story 3, were fast tracked to BD in the US but its just been in UK cinemas for two weeks. You wouldn't want to lose potential customers to imported home video products.

2. To recognize the rules and regulations of censor/certificate/ratings boards.
- Some countries do actually ban films from cinema exhibition and home video release. In Thailand, you are not able to purchase The King and I or Anna and The King as these films have been deemed offensive. If the imports show up on shelves or in the post/mail, it would cause legality issues between Fox and Thailand.

Some films also have a special "localised" release made for ther country which is only authorized to be shown or sold in that country. This goes back to the Distribution Deal issue.

3. Economy
- Let's face it, a few dozen people buying the import is not going to really hurt the economic state but as Hong Kong proved with "street bootlegs," getting films on home video from another source other than the local distributors nearly resulted in the collapse of the Hong Kong film industry in the late 1990s.

The mentality is that the money is going to the same place. Not so. For those of us who either A)Got Starship Troopers Trilogy UK free or B)Gor Starship Troopes UK for $20, your money didn't all go to Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Oh no, it went to Sony Pictures Home Entertainment UK with a partial amount going to Buena Vista International. But how can "my money" go to these companies if I got it free...welll, someone had to pay them if it wasn't you.

Oh sure, some companies can offer all-region discs but they still can "lock" them with content that is incompatible with US & Canadian equipment. Simon Pegg actually begged his fans to buy the import of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People for all the extras through his blog posts, so do you think its odd that this is the only Paramount BD to have PAL formatted content? I sure do not since I'm sure MGM (who distributes this title in the US) had to put some pressure on Paramount to protect their distribution deal.

And then there is the ulttimate way of protecting your distribution deal and Warner did it. To ensure New Line would not lose anymore money to imports of the Jackie Chan films they owned, Warner "picked up" the distribution for these films in Hong Kong, Korea, and Thailand. Sure Warner included the original Cantonese/Mandarin tracks but no English subtitles and the films are now the cut US versions. This could be a coincidence but then again...

So even without region locking in place, distributors are going to find ways to protect themselves from importing/exporting.