[Bluefire101]

DVD Regions Information

The DVD region code identifies a DVD's compatibility with the players typically sold in a particular region.

The following graphic shows the approximate location of each region.



Region 0 (or "region free") is compatible with DVD players from any region.

The majority of all current titles play only in one specific region unless otherwise noted. DVDs sold by Amazon.co.uk are encoded for Region 2 or Region 0. Region 2 DVDs may not work on DVD players in other countries.

Region 1 DVDs sold by Marketplace sellers

Region 1 discs are intended for use with standard DVD players in North America (Canada and the USA). In most instances they can also be played on compatible "multi-region" DVD players (also known as "chipped" or "region-free" players).

They also require an NTSC-compatible television. NTSC is the standard picture format in North America, and differs from the PAL format adopted in Britain and Europe. Region 1 DVDs are usually presented in NTSC format, so you should ensure that your TV is capable of reading the NTSC signal before purchasing Region 1 DVDs.

Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE)

Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE) has been added by some film studios (specifically Warner and Columbia) to selected Region 1 DVDs, with the intention of preventing these discs from playing on some multi-region DVD players. We are therefore unable to guarantee that all Region 1 discs will be compatible with all multi-region players.

Global DVD region countries

This is not a definitive list and is intended only as a guide.

Region 1 - US, US Territories and Canada

American Samoa, Canada, Guam, Palau, Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, Puerto Rico, Micronesia, United States, U.S. Virgin Islands


Region 2 - UK, Europe, Japan, South Africa and Middle East

Albania, Andorra, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Vatican City, Yemen, Yugoslavia


Region 3 - Southeast and East Asia

Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Phillipines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam


Region 4 - Australia, New Zealand, Central and South America

Antigua, Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Barbuda, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Falkland Islands, French Guiana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, New Guinea, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad, Tobago, Uruguay


Region 5 - Former Soviet Union, Indian sub-continent, Africa, North Korea and Mongolia

Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Belarus, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, India, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Latvia, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Lithuania, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, St. Helena, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Zambia, Zimbabwe


Region 6 - China

China


Region 7 - Reserved for future use

Region 8 - International Territories (ships, planes, etc)

[Goldrage]

yay~ thank you!
i was looking for this

[Faust]

If your running these DVDs on a computer, certian video players (VLC) can get around region encoding.

[xibo]

>.>'
in fact ANY video player can. the dvd region encodings are about region ( or rather locale ) encodings, like it s name suggests, and modern computer system can handle ANY locale encodings out there. it s only dedicated dvd-player hardware that is affected by dvd regions.

[Shamisen]

well even with most dvd player hardware you can usually browse some sites to find how to get into the settings for changing the region to region 0

[Bluefire101]

Usually though DVD players have a limit on how many times you can flip the locale of the region (gay as it is and all). But I was mainly referring the tut to actual DVD players and not computers :P

[xibo]

when it s to dedicated hardware you ll have to know you locale's technical foo, to computer systems the mapping is easy: cjk, russian and arabian ( multibyte encoding ) -able stuff can play everything, extended latin ( most of the european languages, halfword alias 8 bit alias octet encoding )-able stuff can play everything but not cjk,russian or arabian while 'american' ( 7-bit encoding ) systems can play only their own things... however since nowadays every computer system can use any encoding that isn t an issue any more.
when you use dedicated hardware, anything can play region 0/1 again, everything but region 1 players can play region 2 but eventually misrender something, while the 'specific' region encodings require their dedicated hardware... ONTOP of only encoding comes the frame rate that is supposed to be used. while computer systems can render arbitraty fps , dedicated hardware can only play stuff that has their fps, e.g. chilean systems use the same encoding that europeans do but they are still incompatible because of the frame rate difference.

the 'better' dvd-players are able to interpolate images to get their wanted frame rate as well as to switch encodings, rendering them able to play ANY dvd.