[Plant-education] videos

[Wil Taylor]

Hello Abigail and fellow plant-ed readers,

At 05:03 PM 7/25/2007, Zoger Abigail wrote:
>Thank you to everyone who sent in suggestions of plant biology 
>videos to use in the classroom.  A large number of people suggested 
>The Private Life of Plants the David Attenborough series.  I'd like 
>to purchase this for our school but I can only find used copies of the videos.
>There  is a DVD copy of the series available in England. The region 
>2 format DVDs will of course not play in the American DVD players, 
>but it does make me wonder if there is not a DVD version for region 
>1 (USA) in the works. I have not been able to find anything on an 
>American DVD version. Does any one know if this is true?

I've been following this situation for years now, as our well-used 
video copy of PLoP continues to deteriorate.  I know of no plans to 
produce a region 1 DVD version, but have not communicated with any 
organization likely to pursue such a course.  Hence, I can't speak 
with any authority on this, but would welcome any input from anyone 
on the list who can.  Here at my institution, I got diametrically 
conflicting interpretations of the *same* copyright language from our 
IT people and our library director (the latter of whom had more 
authority), so was unable to get the VHS transferred to DVD, though 
we have the capacity to do so.  I suspect the difference in 
interpretation was based on fear of litigation and presence/absence 
of a spine in the more authoritative entity (now retired).  I need to 
revisit this.

The suggestion given to me from someone in the film industry was to 
purchase a region 2 player, which is readily available on the 
internet, and just buy the region 2 DVD.   I've not done this, but it 
should work at least in the short term.

Cheers,

Wil Taylor
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire