The Limitations of Containers: Playing a Non-North American DVD on a Laptop

In my job as a librarian at the Media Commons, one of the warnings I give most often to patrons involves the limits of containers. Too often I find myself saying things like: “This DVD is a non-North American DVD (or a Blu-Ray disc), do you have a player that can play it?”; “This is a VHS [or sometimes a 16 mm reel film]. If you don’t have the appropriate technology to play it we have players here.”; “Would you like me to see if we have that on an alternative format?”. Although I do not see the code directly, the limitations of codes and containers is always on the forefront of my mind at my job – especially when it comes to non-North American DVDs.

Patrons often assume that they can play these DVDs on their laptops (and they’re not exactly wrong in making this assumption), but there are some potentially awful consequences that can emerge as a result of the limitations of the container. The average laptop has the ability to read the code from the non-North American DVD, but will only re-zone up to five times. After the fifth re-zoning, the laptop’s DVD player will lock on whatever zone that fifth DVD is from – be it North American or not. This is, of course, problematic for people living in North America who will watch most of their DVDs in a North American format. If their player gets stuck in the European or Asian zone, they will not be able to watch North American DVDs without having to use some sort of mechanism for skirting around the digital constraints of their laptop DVD players. Of course, the technology built into these DVD players will always be able to read these non-North American DVDs; they don’t simply lose this ability after five zone changes. Instead, it is an artificially enforced digital code that tells the player that it is unable to read these non-North American DVDs.

So, what can a patron do when the movie they want to watch is only available in a non-North American format? Well, they could purchase a non-North American DVD player (or apparently a really cheap North American DVD player which doesn’t have this DRM code built into it), or they can use a video player on their computer that isn’t affected by this DRM code. I find myself suggesting all too often that patrons play these DVDs using VLC media player in order to avoid the possibility of the struggle with this DRM code.

Although this example is not one where the limitations of the code is literally made visible, the effect is felt none the less. Thankfully, there is already a software system in place that is made to circumvent this limitation of code. It simply requires an awareness of the limitation. Not knowing that this limitation exists could potentially limit a viewer’s experience to only North American DVDs and could potentially cause problems with a person’s laptop DVD player into the future.