What's a region code?

Question

if I bought a dvd usable in one region(u.s and canada) does this mean it can't be played using dvd players in other countries

Answer 1

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.

  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 -- Reserved 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.

If you have multi-region DVD player then you can play DVDs from all regions.

Answer 2

Region code is a chip, or physical barrier used to prevent the playing of media designed for a device from the country where it is marketed on the version of the same device marketed in another country.

DVDs are the most visible example of regional lockout. Computer DVD drives come from the factory with RPC (Regional Playback Control), either RPC-1 (older drives) or RPC-2 (newer drives). The difference between the two is that RPC-1 means the player software (outside and separate from the drive) has the responsibility of enforcing the region control, while in RPC-2, it is enforced by the drive's firmware. It means that RPC-1 drives, driven by an appropriate player program, can play DVDs from any region (0-8) while RPC-2 drives play only from a particular region (although the region code can be changed 5 times, after which the code is locked).

The main regions are:

   1. North America

   2. West Europe, Japan

   3. Southeast Asia

   4. South America, Australia

   5. Russia, India, Africa

   6. China