By Freda Rumford from the August 2011 Edition
DVD players have region codes locked within them that act as monitors for preventing piracy of DVD’s. This is the complete list of regions and if you cannot play your DVD, this is probably the reason. The best DVD to purchase is, obviously 0 as it covers all regions, so no matter where you purchase your movies they can be watched.
To watch Canadian or U.S. made movie DVD’s it is probably the best to use a DVD player from those countries. If you buy a DVD player in Mexico, in all probability you will not be able to watch them. But the pirated DVD’s in the market will be just fine. Do check the regions when making your purchase.
Some DVD’s can have the regions unlocked but not all.
Region Countries
0 No Region Coding
1 United States of America,Canada
2 Europe, including France, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, Japan and South Africa
3 Korea, Thailand, Vietnam,Borneo and Indonesia
4 Australia and New Zealand,Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America
5 India, Africa, Russia and former USSR countries
6 Peoples Republic of China
7 Unused
8 Airlines/Cruise Ships
0 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.
DVD unlock for regional codes
This site will give the unlock numbers for many DVD players http://www.dvddemystifiziert.de/codefree_en/lg.html
*However, as a reaction to the popularity of Code- Free DVD players, “Hollywood” has instituted another layer of coding on region1 DVDs called RCE (Regional Coding Enhancement) which prevents selected region1 DVDs from playing even on Code-Free DVD players. However, RCE is only implemented on some Region 1 discs, and not on discs from other regions.
The NTSC/PAL Factor*
There is additional hitch in this madness. Since the world is also divided into the NTSC and PAL video systems, the consumer may need a multi-system TV to access DVDs pressed in one of these systems. Although this is difficult in the U.S. market, where all video is based on the NTSC system, most consumers in Europe and some other parts of the world do own Televisions that can view DVDs pressed in either NTSC or PAL.
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Manzanillo Sun’s eMagazine written by local authors about living in Manzanillo and Mexico, since 2009
