R5 movies / weird Wikipedia entry

[ambrosechapel]

Why does the Wikipedia entry for R5 movies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R5_%28bootleg%29 ) say that R5 DVDs are produced "more quickly" in order to "beat the pirates to market"?

This doesn't make sense to me. As soon as you've got a film in the can ready to release in cinemas you can make a DVD of it.

As I understand the rest of the Wikipedia entry, all an R5 release is really is a no-frills DVD. And plenty of movies in other regions are released with no commentary, no subs, etc. I don't take a DVD back to the video store and complain if it doesn't have the director's commentary and a "making of" short.

So really, the movie companies are simply choosing to release on a different schedule than in other markets? The fact that the disk is a no-frills version is neither here nor there.

The wording sounds like propaganda to me, or media-release-speak anyway.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I read the "article" -- it sounds like a lot of bullshit to me.
That's the glory of wikipedia. Any idiot can get on there and start typing...

[guns1inger]

Many R5 movies aren't even released with English audio tracks. They are an attempt by the studios to release to a piracy prone market (Russia/China) ahead of the rest of the world in the hope that they won\t pirate the discs. By releasing without an English audio track or other features, they hope to make them less appealing to the rest of the world.

The studios have always released to different parts of the world based on their own schedules. It has been that way in the cinema for decades, and was the whole point behind region coding to begin with. It is only because of movie pirates that some blockbusters now get world-wide simultaneous release. The reasons for scheduled releases are primarily driven around holidays and peak periods. Films released during July 4 or thanksgiving in the US ofetn don't make it to Australia or the UK until Christmas or later. I have US discs (official releases) that had been on my shelf for over a year before the loacl release occurred.

So yes, it isn't much more than token, just as releasing $2 copies of movies or software in China is much more than token.

[Conquest10]

Films released during July 4 or thanksgiving in the US ofetn don't make it to Australia or the UK until Christmas or later. I have US discs (official releases) that had been on my shelf for over a year before the loacl release occurred.

Same thing happens even to Mexico. I remember the original Scream was released there until late 1997 after the sequel had been in US theaters.