Regions

The DVD world is broken up into the following 6 geographical regions.

REGION 1 -- USA, Canada
REGION 2 -- Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 -- S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 -- Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 -- Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6 -- China

In most cases your DVD player is designed to only play movies for the one of these regions. For example, if you buy a DVD player in the USA, it will be designed to play region 1 DVDs.

DVD movies are also encoded with a region code. A DVD sold in the USA will be encoded as region 1 and will therefore only play back in a region 1 DVD player. If the region code of the DVD and DVD player do not match then you will not be allowed to watch the movie.

In some cases movies are produced as "REGION 0" or "REGION ALL". These DVD can usually play back in any DVD player regardless of the region. Also, it is possible buy special DVD players that can play back movies from all DVD regions.

Regions are not a problem for most people since they get their DVDs and DVD players in the same country. It could be a problem for you if you purchase DVDs on the Internet from another country.

Many rippers give you the option of changing the region code allowing you to create a REGION ALL backup.

The Basics CSS Explained Rippers Macrovision Regions Dual Layer Blank Media
System Requirements