A: A security system introduced to DVD at the request of Hollywood's major studios to ensure that DVDs released and sold in one region will not play on DVD machines in other regions. Movie distributors therefore maintain control over release dates of their films, as well as enabling discs to be produced that conform to different censorship laws, language and subtitle requirements. When a DVD disc is manufactured, a region code is applied at the authoring stage such that the final disc will play only on those players distributed in the designated world region.
There are 8 region codes in use throughout the world:
Region 1 - Canada, United States, U.S. territories, Bermuda
Region 2 - Europe, Western Asia, Egypt, Japan, Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland, British overseas territories, French overseas territories, Greenland
Region 3 - Southeast Asia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan
Region 4 - Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, Central and South America, Caribbean, Mexico
Region 5 - Africa, Central and South Asia, Belarus, Mongolia, North Korea, Russia, Ukraine
Region 6 - Mainland China
Region 7 - Reserved for future use (found in use on protected screener copies of MPAA-related DVDs and "media copies" of pre-releases in Asia)
Region 8 - International venues such as aircraft, cruise ships, etc.
Additionally, DVDs may be encoded as Region 0, or Region All, which means that they are compatible throughout regions 1-6. Similarly, some DVDs region encoding may be listed as 1,2,3,4,5,6 which also indicates compatibility in all regions.
Blu-ray discs are also region encoded, with the regions being as follows:
Region A - Americas, East and Southeast Asia, U.S. territories, Bermuda
Region B - Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, Middle East, Netherlands, British overseas territories, French territories, Greenland
Region C - Central and South Asia, Mongolia, Russia, China
Some Blu-ray discs may also be multi-region, ie A, B and C, which means they are compatible in all regions.
