DVD Regions

Why can DVD players only play DVDs from certain regions? I went to Europe and brought back some DVDs and they won't play in the US. Do they do this for a legal reason or for a technical reason?

 

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Polítical / economical reasons only, I'm afraid...

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DVD players con only work with DVD's from his own region (America, Europe, East Asia (I think), and some more..), the manufacturers thought it would be a good way to fight piracy.

I'm not sure about its success as an anti-copy measure, but it's a real "tocada de cojones" for the average consumer.

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The DVD disc itself has a certain zone code - this is probably written into the table of contents, lead in or lead out area, or some other place on the disc that isn't easily accessable.

DVD drives can be manufactured anywhere in the world, then shipped or exported to another country (for example, a Mitsumi DVD drive can be made in Japan, then sold in america). I'm sure there are ways to get around the problem you are experiencing.

One thing you may want to do is adjust your regional settings. If you are using Windows 98 SE, go to your control panel and click on Regional Settings. Then just change it to somewhere in Europe (I guess preferably where-ever you bought the DVD's from). I don't know if this will change your language settings though.

You can search on the net for "cracks" to get around this, though I wouldn't consider a technical modification to allow you to watch these DVD's a "crack"

 

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Well almost all dvd players have a region free hack installed. I have on mine set to zero so it play play all region dvds.

go to www.vcdhelp.com and see it there.

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Ive never heard of anybodies DVD player that wont play other regions. Its a first for me.

 

I've heard of this before, but never experienced it myself. As I understand Computer DVD drives are usualy sold "Dezoned" as it were, or can be "Dezoned" easily such that they will play any DVD from any zone (does anyone have a map of the zones, I know I've seen them before, it isn't by continent or naion, they group countries together in a weird way).

 

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Region 1 - 1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories
Region 2 - Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)
Region 3 - Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
Region 4 - Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
Region 5 - 5: Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
Region 6 - Peoples Republic of China
Region 7 - Reserved
Region 8 - Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)
Region 0 - These DVDs are "region free" and can be played on any DVD player.

Notes that i found interesting:
DVD regions are rumored to violate certain World Trade Organization laws.

Vista/Touchstone/Miramax, MGM/ Universal, and Polygram contain program code that checks for the proper region. These "smart discs" that do active region checking won't play on code-free players that have their region set to 0, but they can be played on code-switchable players that allow you to change the region using the remote control.

Recently, the Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) has developed a new system called Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE) which will be included on almost all new region 1 DVD releases. This new technology was created to prevent consumers with codefree DVD players from watching DVD discs purchased in North America. From now on, most region 1 DVD discs will be including this technology.

info from: http://www.dvdadept.com/DVD_Regions.asp

 

Don't buy DVDs outside of your region. I don't even know why people would want to do it anyways. It has never even occurred to me to get something from Europe. If you don't like the encoding, well, don't buy the DVD then.

 

That's not a piracy problem : that's because of laws/economy/movies. In fact the movies are on US screens a few weeks/months before Europe. This movie will be on a DVD after 2-3 months in theaters (I don't remember the exact delay) in USA. That's just a mathematic problem : the US DVD are avaible before the movie is on european screens... The zones are here to protect the theaters'sales. (In France a DVD can't be product until 6 months in theaters.)
However, every DVD player can be de-zoned (in fact, that's better because the DVD player constructors give the code to do it... thus they sell more DVD player)

 

I did it because I'm learning German and the DVDs are in German. I want to use them to help me learn.