Audio Description Project
Audio Description Project
It’s
a fact that the UK is way ahead of the USA in supplying audio description
tracks for DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
For example, Warner Bros has been doing it in the UK for years, but
they just started in the USA mid-2015.
Here is how to order some of those videos in the USA.
As you probably know, the underlying encoding of video
discs in the UK is different from the USA (known as Region 1 in the USA
and Canada, and Region 2 in most of Europe).
It is also possible to record a disc as Region 0 (zero), commonly
known as Region Free. When
this is done, the disc (DVD or Blu-ray) can be played on any nation’s players.
Look up any popular DVD on Amazon USA, and you will see “Region 1”
under Product Details. On Amazon
UK, you will likely see Region 2 for the same movie.
However, for Blu-ray discs, you will often, but not always, see “Region
Free.”
The point of all this is that you may be able to purchase
Blu-ray discs produced in the UK with description, when you can’t purchase
a USA-produced disc for the same movie.
And sometimes you can even find those UK-produced discs on the Amazon
USA website. Your approach
should be to find a disc with description on the
Amazon UK website
(where they are kind enough to often tell you the video has description
in the specifications, unlike Amazon USA).
Note the price (in British pounds, worth about $1.32 US in January
2020), and see what they charge to ship to the USA (but you’ll have to open
an account first to do that).
Then copy the ASIN number from the product description,
go to the
Amazon USA website, and type or paste that same ASIN number into the
search field. If you find a
match on the USA Amazon site, then you are looking at the same described
disc. You will note that in
most cases it is sold directly by an importer (Amazon marketplace merchant),
rather than “fulfilled by Amazon.”
Compare prices, if you wish, and order accordingly.
For example, Harry Potter – The Complete 8-Film Collection has description on at least 5 but maybe all 8 of the 8 discs in the UK. Typing that ASIN (B00543RC0Y) in the USA Amazon site yields the same package (and in this case the Amazon USA site actually states that it has audio description). [However, please note that a newer, cheaper, USA version now exists! See our Harry Potter DVD entry.]
There is a link you can use to find all the audio described
titles on Amazon UK, but it’s quite long, so we’ve shortened it for you:
bit.ly/amazonukad.
You would be best off narrowing
your search to Blu-ray discs via the link on that page, because a Region
Free DVD is rare, while it is common for Blu-ray discs.
Of course if you have a player which will play Region 2 discs, it doesn't
matter. To see a list of all titles ever produced with description
in the UK, visit www.yourlocalcinema.com/ad.dvd.html.
Our policy on listing UK-produced discs with audio description
on this site will be that if you can buy it from Amazon USA as “fulfilled
by Amazon” (as opposed to dealing directly with a marketplace seller), we
will list it. We do this to protect
you in case you receive a disc without description, for example, as Amazon
will always refund such a situation, and we can't speak for individual sellers.
We are starting off with two of them:
Harry Potter (link updated January 2017), and
The Hobbit Trilogy. You are of
course free to order other discs you find directly from the Amazon Marketplace
sellers (such as MovieMars). To the extent that users notify
us of other discs fulfilled by Amazon, we will add them to our listing.
