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 through 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.
The end result is that DVDs encoded for regions other than Region 1 cannot be played on a region 1 DVD player, also, players marketed for other regions cannot play region 1-stamped DVDs. |
