What is the DVD area code?

Each DVD and DVD player has a special code in them to identify where a player or disk is to be used; This is called their DVD area code. These codes allow film companies to control the sale and distribution of their products. The purpose of the code system is to prevent people from buying a movie in one region and sending to the other before the movie is released in this area. The DVD region code has been criticized by many copyright and world governments. These groups believe that the region's codes are unnecessarily restrictive, especially if the film is available in one region, but is not scheduled to release in others. For example, films designed for the North American audience are coded in the National Television System Committee (NTSC) format and format for Europe are coded by formatting phase alternative line (PAL). These formats determine how many frames per second appear, video aspect ratio, audio options and several other factors. While most PAL systems can hDiscs coded by NTSC, there are no common NTSC systems that can play PAL drives. By using two different regions for movies, companies could keep formats where they belonged.

There are six real regions that divide the world between NTSC and PAL coding. The divisions are complicated and some countries have access to both coding systems due to regional history or colonial control. In a very basic statement, the region One is the United States and Canada; The two is Europe and the Middle East; The three region is Indonesia; The Four region is Mexico, South America and Australia; The region five is Africa and most of Asia; And the six region is China. Currently the basic six regions are a region 0, which includes regions of one to six; Region Seven, which has a special code used by film studies; and the Eight Region, which has a special code used by airlines. There is also an area called AlL, which are all regions 1-8.

Technically for DVD playback, the area of ​​the player on the player and the disk must match, but it is not always the case. When the code system was new, there were many DVD players and DVDs of disk units multiple. These units were able to play discs with any DVD code code. Newer DVDs can change the areas up to five times, after these five changes, the drive is locked in any region that was last used. Most software video players do not check the DVD code and play anything. Also, when creating personal backups of legal DVDs, it is possible to re -blow the disk into any region.