FAQ

     1.1  What's the story with DVD country codes?
     1.2  What is NTSC, PAL, and SECAM?
     1.3  What is MPEG and why is is important?    

MORE Frequently Asked Questions are on the way soon.

DVD Country Codes

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 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 a disc bought in one country may not play on a player bought in another country. Some people believe that region codes are an illegal restraint of trade, but no legal cases have established 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 don't apply to DVD-Audio, DVD-ROM, or recordable DVD (see below for more detail).
Seven regions (also called locales or zones) have been defined, and each one is assigned a number. Players and discs are often identified by their 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 at <www.blackstar.co.uk/help/help_dvd_regions>.)
Technically there is no such thing as a region zero disc or a region zero player. There is such thing as an all-region disc. There are also all-region players. Some players can be "hacked" using special command sequences from the remote control to switch regions or play all regions. Some players can be physically modified ("chipped") to play discs regardless of the regional codes on the disc. This usually voids the warranty, but is not illegal in most countries (since the only thing that requires player manufacturers to region-code their players is the CSS license; see 1.11). Many retailers, especially outside North America, sell players that have already been modified for multiple regions, or in some cases they simply provide instructions on how to access the "secret" region change features already built into the player.
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NTSC, PAL, and SECAM

These are different broadcast systems standards which describe how video is recorded to media.  It varies based upon different geographic regions of the world.  Here is the breakdown. There are three recording standards worldwide: PAL, NTSC and SECAM

PAL Phase Alternating Line) The colour TV broadcast sytem used in the UK plus Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Canada, Canary Islands, China, Croatia, Denmark, Dubai, Fiji, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Zambia and Zimbabwe.  PAL pictures are made up of 625 horizontal lines.

NTSC (National Television Standards Committee)The colour broadcast system used in the US, Canada and Japan.  An NTSC picture is made up of 525 horizontal lines.

SECAM The colour broadcast system used in France and her dependences and also Canada (who also use the other two systems as well).

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MPEG
MPEG (pronounced M-peg), which stands for Moving Picture Experts Group, is the name of family of standards used for coding audio-visual information (e.g., movies, video, music) in a digital compressed format. The major advantage of MPEG compared to other video and audio coding formats is that MPEG files are much smaller for the same quality. This is because MPEG uses very sophisticated compression techniques.
Because of MPEG's compression capabilities, we are able to enjoy video over the Internet, on CD's, and on DVDs.  Without MPEG, this would not have been possible.  To learn more about MPEG click on the link at right.  Learn More About MPEG