a gamble pays off

One of the first things that I twigged to after I brought home my new blu ray player last Christmas was that Australia is now in the same region as Europe, in the blu-ray world.

This means that we're no longer so much at the mercy of local distributors as to when we're able to acquire new release movies, or how much we can be gouged for them. For example, it's now possible to buy latest release blu-ray movies from the UK and France that aren't even released here (such as Faubourg 36, Ghost Town and Zack and Miri Make a Porno), and to pay less, even including postage, than the average $40 a disk that we'd have to pay here.

Recently, I picked up a buzz on the internet that many Zone A (USA) releases were actually region-neutral, although I couldn't definitely confirm it from a trusted source.

After some research, I decided to take a chance, and I ordered season 3 of Weeds from Amazon. I watched the first 2 seasons of that show on dvd here over a year ago, and really enjoyed it, but so far, no release here of season 3 has been even scheduled, while season 4 has already been solicited in the US.

Today, my package from Amazon arrived (somewhat beaten up in the post, I might add, although the disk itself was safe). Nervously, I placed the first disk in my player and waited. It seemed to take ages for it to recognise the disk, but then... success! It worked!!!

Which means I now have a whole new range of options available to access blu ray product from outside Australia.

I watched the first three episodes of Weeds 3 tonight... at long last, picking up on the cliff-hanger ending from season 2... it was great! And I'll definitely be ordering season 4 when it's released soon.