I've been shopping for a new DVD player recently, and have been quite surprised by the attitude of so many shops when I ask which of their players are multi-region.
I'd really like a multi-region DVD & Blu-ray player, but that hardly seems like an option. I expect I'll get an encumbered PS3 later on, and a multi-region DVD player now.
A typical response from shops that sold decent electronics was 'We don't sell that sort of thing' and to suggest I try a cheaper, dodgier part of town.
This is tricky for me as I'm looking for two distinct kinds of quality. I want both:
- a well designed, constructed and built machine, with particularly good upscaling to 1080p, so it looks good on our HD telly.
- a lack of anti-user features that will mean some of the discs I own won't play because of where in the world they were originally sold.
They are both about a smooth and pleasant user experience, but one is the side of that the industry pushes, the other is about how the industry tries to segment markets in both time and space.
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The Web is becoming more fragmented, and not quite so World-Wide. More and more often, I get to sites that can't show me what I'm there for because of where I seem to be coming from.
I know there's nothing in the internet's protocols that reliably dobs in where you are coming from, so it never really gets in the way.
Having recently moved from the UK to Canada, I naturally want to keep in touch with the old country. Moreover, I watch a number of things from our southern neighbours. As a geek I have no trouble routing my traffic so that I can see the end result. It's always a little clumsy but works in the end. If the BBC let me pay for an overseas TV licence, I'd likely jump at the chance.
I've been misidentified as German, Swedish and, very occasionally, Polish. If it's just Google taking a best-guess as to which site you'd likely prefer with a clear link back to what you actually asked for, that's fairly harmless.
[Image from the NASA Earth Observatory, by Reto Stöckli, based on data from NASA and NOAA. Thank you.]
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I still love London, but I'm getting to love Toronto, too.
I've only been here a shade over a week but have already found a gaggle of fine places for The List.
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