It's good that these people get to know how life sucks with restrictions...

That it was a crappy gift is at least as irritating.

The press in the UK have concluded it was a considered insult to Brown.

Obama's gift demonstrates that Britain is not an ally of the United States, but a vassal or tributary state.

Can't learn what its like having to deal with DRM if you never have to. Maybe this will set the wheels in motion.

Yes - this might be a problem when trying to view US regional DVDs on a PC in the UK but a UK purchased DVD player will have no such problems - there all DVD players must be capable of playing DVDs with any regional setting. One of the few consumer oriented regulations that has had a real impact upon such outdated and outmoded restrictions.

Actually, not so... Most DVD players you buy here in the UK are locked to Region 2. You can buy multi-region players or remove the region lock with a code on certain players, but the mainstream are R2 only. Which is a pain.

Indeed, simple region flipping on a PC could have seen Brown sitting down with Citizen Kane (or whatever other 'American classics') quite happily...

Looks like you are right - I am having trouble tracking when this changed (old news I suppose) but I am pretty sure that when I last purchased a DVD player all those on offer in the UK were multi-region by design or had been adapted before being offered for sale.

That's never been the case.

Not on a mac though, as far as I know. When I had a Powerbook, I couldn't find any way to make it region free. Has that changed?

Depends which drive is in it. Some of the older ones did region checks in hardware so you had to replace the firmware (that was the case on the original SuperDrive 12" PowerBook). On the current MacBooks the region check is in software so VLC works great.

On a Mac you are allowed to change regions 5 times, total, over the lifetime of the computer. So the prime minister could have watched all 25 classic movies, if he didn't alternate with other films in between :-)

I've been able to play European DVDs on my (N. American) Mac using VLC.

This is why I came back here VLC, the free software media player can play region encoded DVDs. I can make sure it DID that sometimes back. Never wanted to check it recently for some reason.

For those who are lazy to google: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Completely wrong. Most DVD players in the UK are locked.

Luckily most can be unlocked with a quick Google for the relevant 'secret code' but nonetheless.