Video Standards

All videos are not alike. Formats vary depending on where you live.

For example, the USA, Canada and Japan use a standard known as NTSC. England and the rest of Western Europe, except France, use the PAL standard. France and Eastern Europe use SECAM. There are undoubtedly other countries that use these standards; I've just listed the ones people ask me about most often.

All you really need to know and remember is that you cannot view a video that's been formatted in a foreign standard unless your VCR -- and in some cases your TV as well -- are capable of decoding it. Many European VCRs are now multi-format capable (NTSC, PAL and SECAM) as a default; check your VCR's manual if you aren't sure.

There are two ways to view videos in foreign standards: 1) You can purchase a multi-format VCR (and TV); 2) you can have the foreign video converted into your standard. Having the video converted is clearly the less expensive option, and there are plenty of places online that will do this. Just do a search for 'video conversion'.

Note: Zones for video standards do NOT necessarily correlate to DVD regions!

DVD Regions

What are "regional codes," "country codes," or "zone locks"? Motion picture studios want to control the home release of movies in different countries because theater releases aren't simultaneous (a movie may come out on video in the U.S. when it's just hitting screens in Europe). Also, studios sell distribution rights to different foreign distributors and would like to guarantee an exclusive market. Therefore they required that the DVD standard include codes that can be used to prevent playback of certain discs in certain geographical regions. Each player is given a code for the region in which it's sold. The player will refuse to play discs that are not coded for its region. This means that discs bought in one country may not play on players bought in another country. Some people believe that region codes are an illegal restraint of trade, but there have been no legal cases to establish this.

Regional codes are entirely optional for the maker of a disc. Discs without region locks will play on any player in any country. It's not an encryption system, it's just one byte of information on the disc that the player checks. Some studios originally announced that only their new releases would have regional codes, but so far almost all Hollywood releases play in only one region. Region codes are a permanent part of the disc, they won't "unlock" after a period of time. Region codes do not apply to DVD-Audio.

There are 8 regions (also called "locales"). Players and discs are often identified by the region number superimposed on a world globe. If a disc plays in more than one region it will have more than one number on the globe.

1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories
2: Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)
3: Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
4: Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
5: Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
6: China
7: Reserved
8: Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)
(See the map.)

Technically there is no such thing as a region 0 disc or a region 0 player. There is such thing as an all-region disc. There are also all-region players.

Some discs from Fox, Buena Vista/Touchstone/Miramax, MGM/Universal, Polygram, and Columbia TriStar contain program code that checks for the proper region setting in the player. (There's Something About Mary and Psycho are examples.) In late 2000, Warner Bros. began using the same active region code checking that other studios had been using for over a year. They called it "region code enhancement" (RCE, also known as REA), and it received much publicity. RCE was first added to discs such as The Patriot and Charlie's Angels. "Smart discs" with active region checking won't play on code-free players that are set for all regions (FFh), but they can be played on manual code-switchable players that allow you to change the region using the remote control. They may not work on auto-switching players that recognize and match the disc region. (It depends on the default region setting of the player. An RCE disc has all its region flags set so that the player doesn't know which one to switch to, then it queries the player for the region setting and aborts if it's the wrong one. A default player setting of region 1 will fool RCE discs from region 1. Playing a region 1 disc for a few seconds will set most auto-switching players to region 1 and allow them to play an RCE disc.) When an RCE disc detects the wrong region or an all-region player, it will usually put up a message saying that the player may have been altered and that the disc is not compatible with the player. A serious side effect is that some legitimate players fail the test, such as the Fisher DVDS-1000.

Information about buying region-free players can be found on the Internet (at sites such as Code Free DVD, Region Free DVD, dvdkits.com, DVD Upgrades, DVD In the World, DVDoverseas, Link Electronics, PlanetDVD, 7thZone, Techtronics, Upgrade Heaven, and ; for Mac: DVD Utilities for Macintosh) and in the rec.video.dvd newsgroups (searchable at Deja.com). There's more codefree player info at DVDCity.