Not All DVDs Play In All DVD Players

Nothing has impacted the home entertainment world quite like DVD. Players and movies have been flying off the shelves worldwide as prices keep falling and consumers keep buying. With superior picture and audio performance DVD has spurred growth in home theater exponentially in recent years. Entire rooms in many homes are now reserved just for the enjoyment of home theater. However, along with DVD's worldwide success, comes its dirty little secret: region coding (also referred to as region lock).

DVD Region Code Designations

The DVD world is divided into six major geographical regions, with two additional regions reserved for specialized use.

To keep it simple, this means that DVD players and DVDs are labeled for operation on within a specific geographical region in the world. For example, the U.S. is in region 1. This means that all DVD players sold in the U.S. are made to region 1 specifications. As a result, region 1 players can only play region 1 discs. That's right, the DVDs themselves are encoded for a specific region. On the back of each DVD package, you will a find a region number (1 thru 6).

The geographical regions are as follows:

REGION 1 -- USA, Canada
REGION 2 -- Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 -- S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 -- Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 -- Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6 -- China
REGION 7 -- Reserved for Unspecified Special Use
REGION 8 -- Resevered for Cruise Ships, Airlines, etc...
REGION 0 or REGION ALL -- Discs are uncoded and can be played Worldwide, however, PAL discs must be played in a PAL-compatible unit and NTSC discs must be played in an NTSC-compatible unit.