Buying DVD Recorders and compatible DVDs seems to be getting more and more complicated these days, what with HD-DVDs, Blu-Ray, PAL and NTSC. Then on top of all these we have DVD Region 1, DVD Region 2, Region 0 etc. all seemingly adding to the confusion.

There’s nothing more annoying than buying a classic or niche subject film on DVD from Amazon or Ebay then finding when you try to play it on your DVD Recorder that it is a Region 1 DVD and the recorder only plays Region 2 DVDs. Most of the new DVD Recorders available now though have in built Region settings which adjust to suit the DVD you are playing so the confusion will eventually be engineered out.

In the mean time though the point of this article is to make you more aware of the various Regional settings and what they mean so you will be able to make the right choices when selecting DVDs to view.

So, why Regions and what do they mean: DVDs have the ability to encode an option which specifies which regions in the world the discs can be played. Movie studios have collectively divided the planet earth into zones, or regions, which corresponds to their distribution system. The 6 global Regions are non political and appear to have been arrived at by a combination of geography, economy or degree of development, and sameness of political system.

Each DVD disk contains one of these six region codes, corresponding to the area in which the disk (and consequently also the DVD player) was bought. In theory, this limits the geographical area in which the DVD disk can be played, thus allowing the distributors to control pricing, content and release date for each of these regions separately.

The Regional codes and associated countries are as follows:

Region 0: Countries – none

Region1: Countries – United States of America; Canada

Region 2: Countries – UK & Europe including France, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, Japan and South Africa

Region3: Countries – Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Borneo and Indonesia

Region 4: Countries – Australia and New Zealand, Mexico, the Caribbean and South America

Region 5: Countries – India, Africa, Russia, and former USSR countries

Region 6: Countries – Peoples Republic of China

Region 7: Unused

Region 8: Used by Airlines and Cruise Ships

Region 9: Expansion (often used as region free)

Technically speaking there is no such thing as Region zero (0). This is a designation used to indicate that a DVD was not encoded with a region flag. This way, it will pass the testing of any DVD player and, that is, you can play it in any region. Although your DVD player can read a disc from another region you still have to be concerned with the video format used to create the DVD. For example, Region 1 discs are made with NTSC while Region 2 and some region 4 use PAL. You will also need either a video format convert or a DVD player with a converter built in to make sure you can play discs from other regions.

With the addition of the Blu-ray format the region encoding scheme has been simplified. There are now only three regions provided. Blu-ray discs can also be produced without region coding which are readable on all Blu-ray capable players. There is still the issue of video format since even within a Blu-ray region some discs may be mastered with NTSC, PAL or other video formats.

The Blu-ray regions are:

Region A – North America; Central America; South America; East and South East Asia; US territories and Bermuda

Region B – Africa; UK & Europe; Oceania; Middle East; Netherlands; British Overseas territories; French territories and Greenland

Region C – Central and South Asia; Mongolia; Russia and China

NTSC and PAL refers to the frames per second used by televisions around the world. There are two television display systems in commercial use: PAL, which is common in UK, Europe and parts of Asia and delivers at a frame rate of 25 frames per second with 625 lines; NTSC is common in USA and Canada and delivers at a frame rate of 30 frames per second using 525 lines. Picture size and pixel aspect ratios also vary but the main thing to be aware of is that all DVD players sold in PAL countries can play both kinds of discs. Most NTSC players cannot play PAL discs.

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