DVDs Obama Sent British PM Don't Work

Telegraph UK:

While not exactly a film buff, Gordon Brown was touched when Barack Obama gave him a set of 25 classic American movies - including Psycho, starring Anthony Perkins on his recent visit to Washington.

Alas, when the PM settled down to begin watching them the other night, he found there was a problem. The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words "wrong region" came up on his screen.

Read the whole story: Telegraph UK

Comments

[andyg]

smartest president ever.

[bilmardre]

Just a guess, but I would fathom that it was probably some aide that purchased the movies.
I think the President is probably busy doing other things. But that is just a guess.

[thundermummy]

Lame post.

[cltclt]

smartest post ever.

[hortonhearsawho2]

Just great, now Britain is gonna want independence...geez.

[PippiLongstocking]

lol

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

Oh, it must be MS2007's VISTA. Or, he can choose ANOTHER region. You're allowed to change regions 5 times I think.

[Just2stressed]

Now wonder why journalists will become extinct, crap like this being reported.

I guess the Telegraph doesn't have anything much to report on.

[Goldennurse]

Come on guys,Obama, your staff needs to pay attention to DETAIL and Common Sense. Small things like this just make Americans look out of touch with the rest of the world.

[hortonhearsawho2]

eight years of war via ur leader, not a problem right, rightie...

[mlr710]

I'm pretty sure invading a country and killing up hundreds of thousands of its citizens in the name of "freedom" made America look out of touch more than some DVDs did.

[filo]

So send him an American made DVD player. They will work fine. Europe uses a PAL standard for DVDs. America uses the NTSC standard. The DVDs would have to be ripped and converted to PAL and reburned in order to work on a European DVD player. It would be much simpler to send him a US made DVD player.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

Thanks for the explanation. Good to know.

[DXM]

Just sending the PM an American DVD player won't solve the problem - the video output would be an NTSC signal which would incompatible with the PM's PAL-standard television. Also, the voltage and frequency of the power coming out of the wall in the PM's home is incompatible with an American DVD player (which would also prohibit the next logical step in your solution which would be getting the PM an American TV to go along with the DVD player). The better solution would be for Obama's people to just send the PM Region 2-compatible DVDs to replace the ones he received.

[filo]

I understand what you are saying about the power but I disagree about the TV set because I can play PAL DVDs on a cheapo ($30) DVD player on my regular US TV. Those same DVDs wilol not play in the 5.1 player though so I convert them. Sending him the right PAL DVDs would be an ideal solution though.

[dkuz09]

I've always wondered why we have different regions anyway...it doesn't make much sense to me. Even videos online can't be seen by the rest of the world simply because they don't live in our country--does it have something to do with the rights to the material?

[sasson]

A lot it has to do with release dates--theirs are usually later than our--and piracy.

[mcantwell]

This is a Recycled article from yesterday.