This post was lying untouched and unedited in my notebook for the past 4 months until I decided to revive it today, for the sake of those who want to opt for a branded PC in India (especially DELL). After working on PCs ( both branded and assembled) I am of the opinion that the branded ones give you the best performance and value for your money.
Last year when it was time to upgrade the PC and I picked up a DELL without much ado. I had heard praises about its sales, service and quality of the machines from my bro-in-law in Hong Kong who’s a big admirer of DELL. Soon after the PC came home, I also wrote about the deplorable experience that I faced in one of my earlier post on this website. However, I discovered another issue this time with the DVD RW/ROM that came along with the configured machine. According to a sales rep, I was the first customer reporting this problem and that shocked me even further because the issue was with my region locked DVD RW/ROM that shipped with my DELL Inspiron 530s and I swear to god, I was had no knowledge of this issue prior to settling for this configuration. My contention was that just like any other component including the monitor, the RAM, the processor, etc., I should have been given a choice by the company to select from a region locked or a region free DVD RW/ROM drive and I was completely clueless about the same. I have not received a satisfactory reply from the makers and hence this article.
What’s DVD Region Coding?
Firstly we need to understand what does Region coding mean and what are its implications. Here’s an explanation straight from a website – “Region coding” is a technological scheme designed to make a DVD purchased in one part of the world unusable anywhere else. This is done by splitting the world up into seven “regions” and then coding a DVD to only be usable on players coded for those regions [citation].
The logic is clear here – it inadvertently means the PC which I configured for myself i.e. after caring for the processor speed, the HD capacity, the monitor size, the RAM, etc. shipped with a DVD RW/ROM that was pre-configured without my knowledge to play only Region 3 DVDs. Not to forget that I can change the pre-configured region settings to upto 4 times only. Consequently the hardware locks itself permanently to the last set region-code and you have to live with it for life. It means I have no control over how I entertain myself and DELL dictates what I should be watching on MY OWN PC for which I paid through the nose! talk about fairness, huh?
What happened at DELL?
After I rang up DELL India customer service at Bangalore, they had no clue (or probably they had) about what I was talking. I was thoroughly disgusted with their laid-back replies and wanted them to replace this “faulty” DVD Drive with a region-free one. One thing I told them consistently was that I was not going to live with this thing forever. I was sure being a global company it was well within its control to do it but they were dragging it far too long and I was losing my patience on this. After several rounds of sweet telephonic talk, one of their lead technicians got back to me with a trial software which could surpass the region-locking code which was unacceptable to me because I would have to pay for using it (unless DELL India was prepared to sponsor it). I finally raised my temper and blasted the technical lead. I also wished to speak to Rajan Anandan (Vice President & GM – Dell India) or even go to the consumer court if this problem was not resolved in the next 5 days. To cut the long story short, the DELL sales rep who had taken my initial order confirmed to get back soon after some time with a solution. I haven’t heard from him as yet.
I do hope that if you’re buying a PC (from DELL or whoever else in India), please clarify the issue of DVD Region-locking first before placing the order. It’s crucial for the benefit of your entertainment freedom otherwise you’d be compelled to use some third-party software that removes the DVD region-code and plays it for you. Having said whatever I have in the last couple of paragraphs, let me conclude by admitting that I still like DELL and I expect that they’d pay attention to this problem sooner or later.
Very nicely explained Bhooshan. I think the companies like DELL and others entering into Indian market should appoint technically sound people who are able to solve the issue which a customer faces. One step more the duty of company doesn’t end only after selling the product and show the world about how they created a high end sales record in their accounts.
Thanks Hemant. It’s crucial that consumers know what they’re getting into before they invest their money into some well-known brand. For all you know, this issue might be beyond the control of companies like DELL but they have to explain their stand in clear terms and not ignore it like they have been doing in my case.
This is an unfair trade practice and countries like New Zealand and Australia are considering laws that bar manufacturers from shipping or selling region-locked DVDs in their country. In India it’s important that we have similar laws to protect the buyer, otherwise it will encourage people to buy illegal stuff from the streets (for info, DVDs that are burnt after breaking the region-code using a software, become region free automatically and are playable on almost any region-locked DVD RW/ROM). In that case the government tends to lose seriously on the service and other taxes.
I am glad that you liked what I have written and I hope that many in India and abroad take benefit from this article and ask for a clarification from the manufacturer before buying a DVD RW/ROM.
Just bought a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop and ran into problem – first had to set it to a region for my region 1 DVD to play. My problem is that I was leaving for region 2 (on a regular basis) and my system onlyl allows 4 changes! Researching the problem. I had brought one of my Phililps DVD player over on the last trip and a hack (web info) changed it into any region capable.
Would like something similar on Dell Laptops