It's a broadly known fact that many DVD playback devices (Players, recorders, etc) can be unlocked to play discs from around the globe.
Currently standard retail DVDs are commonly encoded with a region code which is intended to restrict the area of the world in which they can be played. Current regulations that relate to DVD players state that models must only play discs from regions were the players are sold – So simply, if you purchase a DVD player in the US (region 1) by default it should only playback DVDs from the same region (region 1) or DVDs that are region free (aka region 0).
As with most things in life the reason for this region system is cash and control, restricting DVDs by region means that the producers can release different versions of films in different regions or release films on different dates. Many web sites provide free step by step procedures which allow the owners of particular makes of DVD hardware to convert their units to region free status.
The ongoing battle of the next generation formats (Blu-ray and HDDVD) will soon be deciding the dominant format for future movie releases although it's worth remembering that the eventual demise the DVD is far from imminent - we now need to ask the question what new restrictions will the new formats bring and how will they impact on the consumer?
In common with DVDs, Blu-ray discs also employ a region based system but instead of nine numeric zones Blu-ray uses a simpler alpha based classification over three international zones: A (covering North America, Central America, South America, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Hong Kong and South-east Asia), B (covering Europe, Greenland, French territories, Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand) and finally C (covering India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Mainland China, Pakistan, Russia, Central and South Asia).
You may be thinking its a much better system than the DVD region system but we need to look outside the regions. The famous worldwide brand Sony developed and heavily supports Blu-ray technology - lets not forget that Sony has its fingers in just about every stage of film production, systems such as region encoding are extremely lucrative to Sony and this quickly explains way Sony branded DVD players are near impossible to convert to region free.
Putting aside Blu-ray's region system the technology is also locked down with several layers of DRM (Digital Rights management). DRM is now common place in retail digital medium, in a nutshell DRM dictates what the consumer can or cannot with their purchased medium.
Looking towards the alternative format of HDDVD (High Definition DVD) the situation is totally different. Developed jointly by Toshiba and NEC the format current employs no region system however there are no guarantees this will always be the case. Presuming HDDVD stands well in it's format war with Blu-ray many think that pressure from film studios in the future could mean the format gaining it very own region system.
Like I said earlier - it's worth remembering that the eventual demise the DVD is far from imminent.
About the author:
Tim Day runs http://www.dvd-unlock.co.uk, his site provides free unlocking information for DVD hardware.
Source: www.articlesbase.com
