05/10/2005
Shame of the nation
entry posted by Inquisitor at 23:35
(permalink).
categories: Idiots
, Music
So I finally get the time to go out and look through this week's new music releases. Witching Hour by Ladytron has finally been released (you may have seen my review of the MP3 leak back in mid-August, and it's just as good as it was then), so I pick up the copy with the free live DVD - £12.99 from Fopp or Avalanche - and a second-hand PWEI CD.
However, I also went out to buy the New Order DVD releases, and came back empty handed. This despite the fact that the releases are both desirable and well-specified, especially for a fan like me who's been unable to see this material before.
The problem is the way Warner Europe are ripping off the European consumer. In the USA, the two releases (a videos DVD and the documentary New Order Story, the latter released on VHS and laserdisc in 1994 and promptly becoming rare soon afterwards) are a single Item, priced at around $24.98 - £14.21 according to the Google converter. In the UK, they're two separate discs, retailing at £13.99 each; the dual pack is a HMV exclusive priced at £24.99. Ripoff Britain or what?
Now, there's usually a disadvantage of buying US discs of UK bands. Many of the music videos will almost certainly have been made on the cheap on PAL video, so there'll have to be a standards conversion to get them onto a US NTSC disc. The same applies to New Order Story. Even those videos that were made on film have probably been converted from a video source rather than going back to the original reels of 16mm, because it's cheaper. This can lead to picture quality problems, and should be avoided at all costs - you should always buy video-sourced material at the frame-rate and resolution it was intended for. This doesn't apply to films, as generally two transfers are made at the different frame rates - so avoiding conversion artifacts, which are much much more annoying than PAL speedup and thus no reason to avoid buying R2 films. But for video, you should always buy from the native source.
You would expect this would be the UK; they are, after all, a British band making videos in Britain and, throughout the 80s, on a very British record label (Factory). The only problem is that Warner aren't playing ball - the only difference between the UK and US discs of the New Order material is that the US one is region code 1 while the UK one is region code 2. That's it. We get the inferior standards-converted videos (and apparently VHS-quality New Order Story) despite the fact we shouldn't. And, to add insult to injury, we're made to pay £10 more for a different region code.
This piece of institutional cheapness is amazing. On Universal Interscope, Marilyn Manson (not my favourite either) released their complete video collection on the bonus DVD with the best-of, not charging all that more for it either. I want to see artists I actually want to buy doing that - the video collection and NOS should have been in the wasted-opportunity Retro box set (which, needless to say, I own). This sort of flagrant disregard of the fans is the main reason why no-one's buying CDs anymore, except schmucks like me.
Anyway, I have a multi-region player and a TV that can cope with raw NTSC, so Warner UK can get stuffed. I'm buying from the States. The band will get their royalty and Warner UK won't, so that's just fine by me.