What is the point of regional DVD restrictions?

Question

I just bought a European DVD on Ebay, and neither of my American DVD players will play it. My computer will, so it's not a problem, but I was just wondering why they do that. As long as you paid for the DVD, why does it matter where you are when you watch it?

Answer 1

Its a cartel pricing technique. The strategy is divide and conquer. They know that people have more money in some countries than they do in others, and that some countries have more laws or cultural inhibitions about copying, so they market at different prices in different places. They also do this with personal electronics, like cameras. A camera meant to be sold in Asia that is instead sold here in the US is called "Gray market" as if there was something illegal about selling something you own.

Answer 2

It's partly to allow differential pricing and differing regional release scheduling, but mainly because the rights to the movie on DVD may be owned by different companies in different regions (rather than worldwide by one company). Region coding therefore allows for greater control of licensing -- and therefore royalties.  

Note that Blu-ray movies follow a less restrictive Region coding scheme (3 vs the 7 for DVD) and over half of Blu-ray movies are region free (not region locked).

Answer 3

It is to cut down on the following:

1) p****y

2) Tax and tariff evasion

3) Designing for compatibility complexity.

Answer 4

One reason for this was to stop illegal copying or to make things a little harder for the copiers. So a DVD that was copied in Asia with the Asian regional setting would only be playable in Asia.

Of course this form of protection was setup before the DVD encryption was cracked outright and it really has little impact on illegal copying other than making it more of a pain today.

The main reason behind it was to protect movie box office sales. A movie might be released on different days in certain countries and could still be playing in theaters when the DVD is released in another country.

Price fixing has been thought of as another reason but has yet to be proven legally.