Gadgetory

with the world becoming smaller it's pretty easy to find a foreign film sporting event or breaking news story that you're interested in from abroad but then when you go to tune in or watch that blu-ray you ordered from Hong Kong BAM you're hit with an error saying you can't watch hard-boiled with chow yun-fat in your region well what gives with that region locking has been a fact of life for a while but has become especially frustrating since DVDs rose to popularity in the late 1990s and the way it's worked since then is pretty much like this when you go to buy a movie or a TV show you might see a little globe on the back with a number from 1 through 7 for DVDs or a letter from A through C for blu-ray discs these refer to the region of the world the disc is intended to be used in but why would that matter well you see DVD and blu-ray players sold in a specific region are locked on a firmware level to whichever region they are sold in which like the disc you can usually see by checking on the back of the player so if you're in the US with a region one player and you order a DVD from hongkong like our example before which is in region 3 assuming that you didn't buy a region free disc on the black market you are going to be out of luck though fun fact some computer optical drives allow you to change the region but after you've done it a few times these drives also become region locked in the firmware but come on Linus that's Stone Age technology I stream everything online well even so you've probably encountered region locking anyway especially if you're trying to do something like watch European soccer in North America or access the u.s. Netflix library from Canada in cases like these the website you're trying to access will determine your location by looking at your IP address and block it if you're in an IP range that they know belongs to a different country and although many enterprising movie lovers and sports fans have gotten around this using VPN services that route data traffic through a different location which you can learn more about here this isn't a foolproof solution since some content providers block IP ranges that they suspect belong to commercial VPN services as well okay then Linus why do the powers that be bother with all of this if I pay for something why can't I just watch it don't they want my money well it used to be that technological compatibility was a big part of the rationale for region locking when DVDs started becoming widespread many TVs were still predominantly using analog inputs and different parts of the world used incompatible standards for analog TV with NTSC popular in the Americas Korea and Japan and pal and SECAM dominant in most of the rest of the world this is actually why cartridges for older game systems like thus ness and Sega Genesis wouldn't work with versions of the console purchased from different countries although there were workarounds but back to the bit about creators in the modern day wanting your money well someone definitely does but who has the right to collect it you see creators want to be able to control how their content is distributed so they can make royalties off of it and since there isn't a worldwide emperor of copyright Lord of distribution it often falls to smaller third-party distributors in individual countries who are contracted to take a cut for handling marketing and localization for the content and to pass along some pre-negotiated royalties to the original creator so with modern digital standards allowing quick distribution of nearly anything to the entire world I still expect region locking to be around for quite a while as copyright holders try to keep their content from floating about freely in every corner of cyberspace and I wish them luck with that speaking of luck if you were wondering to yourself gee if only there was an online platform where I could get the best audiobooks for a reasonable price and I could download them and listen to them on my mobile device if I'm you know bored at work can I have a monotonous job or if I'm driving or if I'm trying to fall asleep at night then you're in luck because audible.com exists yes my friends it does to save you the person who wants to read but doesn't have the time to sit down and stare at a book from not knowing what happens in really John how to make friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie because I'm lonely and my employees never listen to me that's what John puts in there well audible.com has how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie but they also have lots of other stuff too like fiction and periodicals and Wow now I feel now I feel really sad what a mean thing to say anyway you can get your free audio book with a 30-day free trial to their audiobook membership at audible.com slash tech wiki by checking out the link in the video description so thanks for watching guys if you like this video like it if you disliked it dislike it if you want to check out other channels boom if you want to leave a comment with suggestions for future fast as possible down there John we'll be checking those out and also down there is the subscribe button you should definitely click on that so you don't miss any more videos just like this one