HP In Bed with Industry Executives

Hewlett-Packard knows where the money and power are and they stay very close to it. In the past year HP has released a number of products that try to curb and cut down the effectiveness of copied DVDs and/ or DVDs that have been filmed by camcorders in movie theaters. These moves more than certainly please producers and Hollywood executives as they try to clamp down on the never ending stream of pirated video that seems to be coming from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh with the ferocity of a Bengali Tiger.

Hewlett Packard’s latest and greatest technology is a projector that will refuse to play DVDs that appear to have been recorded by a camcorder. They also have developed a projector/ DVD combo that utilizes the same technology. However, projector and projector lamp industry experts wonder if this move by Hewlett-Packard will be followed by the rest of the industry or if HP will look like a mad cow grazing in a barren pasture alone. Whatever the outcome, one has to imagine it is a big risk for HP.

With the global village shrinking everyday, more and more people from the West are visiting countries where DVDs are copied and sold. In some countries I have been to, centralized department stores in major cities have entire sections devoted to purchasing copied DVDs. These store sections come complete with chairs, small monitors and women dressed in red department store outfits that bring buckets full of DVDs for you to choose from. Of course, they also sell DVD carrying cases, plastic cases and every movie comes with an insert cover, basically everything you need.

So, with these elaborate setups in place it is hard to imagine how HP manufacturing a DVD player that won’t play these DVDs will slow anything down. It is equally difficult to imagine Pakistani teenagers paying $20 USD for a DVD.

It seems burnt DVDs and CDs are here to stay, and producers and executives will have to be happy with a few million dollars less.

MyProjectorLamps.com is no way condones illegal reproduction of DVDs.