Amen to that.
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I have no doubt that Blu-Ray will be region hacked sooner or later, but just the fact that they're even instituting it is dumb. Even many regular DVD players nowadays are easily hackable (through remote codes) to make the region free right from the factory. Some of them, such as Oppo Digital's players even directly advertise themselves as region free. Sony is such a megalomaniacal company, they want to control everything. They're like the Wal-Mart of electronics companies.
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I thought the region encoding on blu-ray is optional? I mean, the players support it if the publisher wants it, but it is completely up to the publisher whether they want to include it or not?

I know the games for the PS3 are region-free in the way that they can be bought anywhere and will work anywhere. The games can contain code however to work differently depending on where it is played, so that regions that heavily censor content in games such as Germany, can have their damn censored game without it being a separate release. Whether this works better than the old system remains to be seen.
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That is a good point. And region coding is something Sony feel very strongly about. Look at their recent PSP exploits, sueing companies in Asia for supplying PSPs outside of their intended region.

The newest PSP custom firrmware based on Sony's newest fw3 release makes me launch as practically within days of its release the custom version was out that removed region restrictions allowing any UMD to be played from any region, and also the bypassing of all other PSP restrictions.

Sony, as with most large corporations, do have a lot of bad things against them, but equally they still manage to produce some nice consoles and other technology which is worth the purchase.

I didn't know that HD-DVD was region free. That is good if that continues to be the case. The UK government was reports to have told manufacterers that they must try to make all of their next generation optical HD players compatible with both HD-DVD and BluRay formats. This can only be a good thing, but we will have to see if the manufacters play ball and do this or if the UK government have the balls to sue them of they don't.

Personally I'm holding off the purchase of a HD format until a clear winner in the format wars is announced. I have a feeling it will split into Bluray being the format for PS3 and HD-DVD being the format for home video players replacing current DVD players, so in effect both formats win in their own markets. Bluray won't die purely because it is the PS3 format.

I don't. I fully expect Blu-Ray players to get hacked in no time. Look at when DVD first came out. No players could be soft modded to run other region discs, but mod chipd soon appears to bypass this.

I purchased a nice Sony DVD player soon after DVD took off and bought it pre-chipped to make it region free from an official Sony Centre! How cool is that! And I have to say that I'm still using the same DVD player to this day. Everyone I know who purchased much cheaper players have been through 2 or three since. My Sony still continues to work perfectly, giving great sound and audio, output to my Sony AV Amp of the same age which is also still working perfectly.

As I said above, Sony may be obsessed with trying to restrict access by region, but they do make some great hardware.

At the end of the day though you cannot blame Sony alone for wanting to protect their discs and its content. Making things region free is also not liked by governments. If consumers can purchase a disc at a lower price from another country that will work out of the box then they will. But doing this doesn't generate any income for any retailer in the country the person is living in, and the government don't make any tax from it either. Do you think it is only large organisations that have a part to play in region encoding and region restrictions? Think again. The governments are working with the companies to try and enforce region restrictions so they ensure revenue from all purchases made from their population.
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I know that it's a whole "conspiracy" and not just Sony's doing, but I just don't get how HD-DVD can go region free with no problems and Sony can't follow suit. I totally forgot about Sony putting Lik-Sang out of business too. I'm sorry, but that was a dick move if ever there was one. That's the kind of thing that really angers me about companies like Sony. Like they don't have enough money and they have to squash someone who's actually trying to give the fans what they want.

I'll agree that they do have some good hardware, but there are comparable or better things out there. When I bought my HDTV, a Panasonic 34" widescreen, I did a side by side comparison of it with a Sony HDTV of the same size. The sales guy and myself tweaked the settings on both and no matter what I or he did, the Panasonic clearly had the better picture. At least to my eyes anyway. Not only that, it had more options (simulated surround, BBE enhancement, etc.) that the Sony did not. AND the Sony cost $200 more. From my experience with Sony, you're just paying for the name most of the time.
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Sony gear used to be the mutt's nuts but now it seems a long way from that.

Although LowercasE, was it a flat panel screen? Panasonic screens trounce Sony ones.
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It's actually a 34" CRT Panasonic "Tau", but it's a flat tube/screen. I looked into flat panel LCD but in my opinion, CRT is still the best as far as picture (black levels, contrast, and color reproduction) is concerned. Then again, the thing weighs nearly 200lbs and is quite bulky.
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New topic created for this and pinned to the top of this sub forum
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In the UK CRT HDTV all but don't exist. I've never personally seen one. I expect some do get sold but not in any high street stores I've seen.

I do agree that CRT screens do still offer much over LCD in one big area. Scaling. Flat Panels always have to use the fixed resolution pixels they have so are limited in the way they can scale outside of their native resolution. Whereas CRT's can scale easily with no difference in quality.

But give an LCD or Plasma screen a picture in its native resolution and it will blow the CRT out of the water and show how blurred any CRT is in contrast.

It's weighing up what you need the most I suppose. I always preferred CRT monitors over LCD for a long time, but now only use LCDs. Why? Computers and graphics cards became fast enough that the native resolution of the LCD is all that you ever need to run. Games no longer need to be dropped to lower resolutions to run at good frame rates, and the high resolution and clear graphics and type are perfect in the native resolution for desktop work.

CRT only looks better a lot of the time because it's analogue technology is good at hiding imperfections by slighly bluring the screen dots together.

As for the quality of Sony products. I agree. They used to be some of the best made, but now many of the other good makes have caught up or are better. I personally think Panasonic products have always been just as good as Sony. Others such as Samsung have recently caught up and are now overtaking Sony in may areas too.
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Good points you mentioned there Harrison.

Panasonic did a range of kind-of-high-ish definition CRTs in the UK under the Acuity range. They could run at 733i resolution by some fancy scaler or somthing. Bloody good tubes but sometimes I felt the image was a little "over-processed".

They didn't do the actual HD resolutions as we know them now - they came out just before HD sets became available (possibly the standards had not been set at that point). Could also do PAL Progressive scan. They were very capable sets. I was tempted to get a refurb one cheaply. Glad I didn't now though, as I love my plasma.
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