I Want. But I Can't Have. Yet.

Hello petals! It's been a while since anyone's had a good whine here...

*blows away cobwebs*

This weekend, many of my twi-friends got the chance to get their grubby little paws on the Breaking Dawn, Part One DVD, in all it's variations. It has been released in America & Canada... where a large number of my luvvies reside.

However.... those of us in other areas, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, etc? No DVDs for us yet.

I can't speak for others (or am too lazy to wiki it) but in New Zealand the release date is March 15th. This makes me a little sad.

I KNOW, I KNOW. I got to see the film in the cinema before everyone else. I've been on the fun side of international release date variations. BUT you know what? This is my post and imma whine if I want to. I saw Breaking Dawn ONE DAY before everyone else, so I'd get it if we had, you know, a week's delay, or something.... but five weeks? COME ON.

Because my tweeps are such AMAZEBALLS people, loads and loads have offered to buy DVDs and post them to me. Here's the thing. American DVDs won't work in New Zealand DVD players, thanks to a little invention called DVD REGION CODES. This is something I learned when I lived in the UK, and suddenly couldn't play DVDs from home.

So, I thought I'd turn my Breaking Dawn whine into a positive. They say you learn something every day. If you didn't know about region codes, it's your lucky day!

Basically, these regions exist so that film distributors can control elements of a release, content, etc, for different areas of the world. DVD players sold in different areas of the world will only play DVDs from certain regions. Take a look at the back of any DVD on your shelf. There'll be a little number indicating the region, like this:

My Eclipse DVD

There are exceptions, multi-region players, ways to get around this. But for the great majority, we're restricted to buying DVDs from the region we live in.

I stole this picture from the wiki page linked above:

Yup. Pretty, but a little annoying. So, I'm a '4', most of you are '1's and '2's.

So there you have it! A wee education lesson for you. I really hope all of you who have the DVD are enjoying it, and enjoyed the sneak peek of BD2 that you got to see... that the rest of us then saw online (shh).

Ooh! Another thing. Wanna see my cute new kitten? I posted all about him HERE. Check it out.