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| Back to: | Foreign Films Main Menu - Region-free DVD Players |
DVD Compatibility FAQ
Since there are a number of issues that are confusing about DVDs and their compatibility with different players, countries, televisions sytems, and so forth, we are providing a DVD compatibility Frequently Asked Question list to clear up some of these matters.
What are region codes?
What is region "0"?
Why do we have region codes?
Is region encoding a matter of law?
What is RCE/REA?
What is VHS?
What is PAL and NTSC?
Are there PAL to NTSC and NTSC to PAL converters available?
How do you tell what region code a DVD disc is?
Is it illegal to operate a region-free DVD player?
Can you buy region-free DVD players?
What should I look for in a region-free DVD player?
I have heard there are hacks to change DVD players to region-free players?
Are software DVD players region-free?
What are region codes?
Region codes stamp DVD discs, hardware and software players, and disc drives with a code that idenitifies the locality in which they are supposed to operate. There are eight official region codes, only the first six of which are currently in use:
- United States of America, Canada
- Europe, including France, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, Japan and South Africa
- Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Borneo and Indonesia
- Australia and New Zealand, Mexico, the Carribean, and South America
- India, Africa, Russia and former USSR countries
- People's Republic of China
- Unused
- Airlines/Cruise Ships
| Figure 1: Region Encoding Map for DVDs |
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What is region "0"?
Region code 0, is in fact not a region but signifies that there is no encoding - that it is a region-free disc, player, software, drive, etc. Regional encoding is not mandatory or required by law, but is optional for all manufacturers. Thus region-free discs or "Region 0" discs have been becoming more and more common.
Why do we have region codes?
Region codes appear originally to have been proposed to prevent DVDs appearing in a market where movies were still being shown. For instance, if a film opened in the U.S. first, the DVDs might appear six months later - but the film might open later in other markets overseas after the DVDs were released in the U.S. market. With the easy access of goods over the Internet, it was decided that there should be a splitting of markets into protected zones. However, there are a number of problems if this was in fact the intention, for there are better solutions to this problem. The market for DVDs is overwhelmingly that of movies that are past the original theater showings in all countries, yet the consumer is prevented from watching these unless they have a player that has the same region coding. It would have been quite simple to create a system which was timestamped, and allowed the encoding to prevent people from viewing it until perhaps a year had lapsed after the first release of the film, thus allowing older movies to be seen on all players. It thus appears that region encoding was in fact an attempt to erect trade barriers that are in the interests of all sellers and against the interests of all consumers, rather than to protect merely the interests of theaters.
Is region encoding a matter of law?
Regional encoding is not mandatory or required by law, but is optional for all manufacturers. Thus region-free discs or "Region 0" discs have been becoming more and more common.
What is RCE/REA?
RCE, or Regional Coding Enhancement (also REA), is another fix in the coding system that is designed to prevent discs from playing on region-free players. Realizing that more and more region-free players are appearing, the movie industry added another layer to the encoding, which contains program code that checks for the proper region setting in the player. If there is no region encoding, the disc is rejected. However, if the player is manually set to the region of the disc, the disc will play properly. A grey area involves players which automatically detect the disc region and change to that setting - some of these appear to operate and others do not. RCE/REA, however is still not very common in discs. Most region-free players that are sold now will play RCE/REA discs; and while there is no guarantee that a new round of fixes will not occur in this cat and mouse game, there may be limits on how far this can go, as the engineering depends upon the design of DVD disc drives, which may not support further jerry-rigging.
What is VHS?
VHS stands for Video Home System (originally Vertical Helical Scan), and is a recording and playing standard for video cassette recorders that was developed by JVC in 1976, and became the dominant standard in the 1980's after competing with Sony's Betamax. A VHS-cassette contains a 1/2 inch magnetic tape wound from one of two spools to the other, allowing it to pass over the reader head of the video cassette recorder. VHS tapes have an approximately 3 MHz horizontal resolution and 250 lines of vertical resolution.
VHS tapes come in both PAL and NTSC television formats, and it won't be possible to view tapes with another television format on an incompatible TV system. When buying videotapes in other countries, make sure to find out whether it will be compatible with your televison system. As a rule of thumb, videotapes from the U.S. and Canada will be in NTSC format, and those from Europe (including Britain) will be in PAL format. See the information in the next question below for more information about these formats, including a list of countries using each format.
What is PAL and NTSC?
PAL and NTSC refer to the different television formats extant in the world, and create another and more difficult hurdle to those who wish to play DVDs or videotapes from other countries. Even if one can change the region encoding of a player, one will not be able to watch the DVD unless there is a compatible TV system matching the disc. However, fear not, for there are many region-free DVD players that perform NTSC<->PAL encoding. PAL and SECAM differ only in the way they process color, and so modern video systems use PAL internally (for storing the data in the storage media, etc) and just change the color encoding to SECAM when outputting the signal back to SECAM TV. The following is an explanation of the differing television formats:
| Figure 2: Country Map of NTSC, PAL, and SECAM Formats |
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NTSC stands for National Television System Committee, which devised the NTSC television broadcast system in 1953. NTSC is also commonly used to refer to one type of television signal that can be recorded on various tape formats such as VHS, 3/4" U-matic and Betacam. The NTSC standard has a fixed vertical resolution of 525 horizontal lines stacked on top of each other, with varying amounts of "lines" making up the horizontal resolution, depending on the electronics and formats involved. There are 59.94 fields displayed per second. A field is a set of even lines, or odd lines. The odd and even fields are displayed sequentially, thus interlacing the full frame. One full frame, therefore, is made of two interlaced fields, and is displayed about every 1/30 of a second.
The following countries use the NTSC format: USA, Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Burma, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Greenland, Guam, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, St. Kitts, Saipan, Samoa, Surinam, Taiwan, Tobago, Trinidad, Venezuela, Virgin Islands.
The following countries were listed as Monochrome 625/50 in one resource: Angola, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Replublic, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia (or PAL or SECAM in other resources).
PAL stands for Phase Alternation by Line, and was adopted in 1967. It has 625 horizontal lines making up the vertical resolution. 50 fields are displayed and interlaced per second, making for a 25 frame per second system. An advantage of this system is a more stable and consistent hue (tint). PAL-M is used only in Brazil. It has 525 lines, at 30 frames per second.
The following countries use the PAL format: Afghanistan, Algeria, Argentina (PAL-N), Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brunei, Cameroon, Canary Islands, China, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Gibralter, Greece (also SECAM), Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, North Korea, Kuwait, Liberia, Luxembourg (also SECAM), Madeira, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay (PAL-N), Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia (also SECAM), Siera Leone, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay (PAL-N), Yeman (the former Yeman Arab Republic was PAL, and the former People's Democratic Republic of Yeman was NTSC ), Yugoslavia, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
SECAM stands for Systeme Electronique Couleur Avec Memoire, which was adopted in 1967. It has 625 lines and 25 frames per second. The following countries use the SECAM format: Albania, Benin, Bulgaria, Congo, former Czechosolvakia, Djibouti, Egypt, France, French Guiana, Gabon, Greece (also PAL), Guadeloupe, Haiti, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Libya, Luxembourg (also PAL), Madagascar, Martinique, Mauritius, Monaco (also PAL), Mongolia, Morocco, New Caledonia, Niger, Poland, Reunion, Romania, Saudi Arabia (also PAL), Senegal, Syria, Tahiti, Togo, Tunisia, former USSR, Viet Nam, Zaire.
Are there PAL to NTSC and NTSC to PAL converters available?
It is possible to buy hardware systems that will convert from one format to another, but a better solution for those who wish only to watch DVDs is to get a DVD player that performs these conversions. The players we sell on our site all do this, and this should be a major consideration when looking for a player. Many players that can be set to region-free status by a hack also have this capability, so if one goes that route one should look carefully for information about this. The freeware software player that we list below also performs PAL<->NTSC conversion.
How do you tell what region code a DVD disc is?
The Region Code is usually specified on the back of the individual DVD packages, either with a Regional Coding logo of a globe with the region number superimposed over it, or specifically spelled out. Sellers of DVDs will almost always feature the Region coding in their technical details, and one can generally presume that a DVD sold or rented locally will conform to the local region encoding, and that a non-local encoding will be spelled out. For instance, if I go into a video store in the U.S. I can assume that all rentals will be Region 1 and NTSC television format unless told otherwise. If it is a PAL edition or a Region 2 (or other) encoding, the consumer will be warned of this.
Is it illegal to operate a region-free DVD player?
It is not illegal - the region encodings are a matter of trade agreements rather than regulation or law.
Can you buy region-free DVD players?
Yes, since they are quite legal there is no problem buying one, and there is a thriving industry here. See our hardware page for DVD players that fill the requirements listed below.
What should I look for in a region-free DVD player?
You should make sure that they should also play RCE/REA discs, and that they perform PAL<->NTSC conversion. With the latter it may also be important to know something about the quality of the conversion - whether the original aspect ratios are maintained, whether there is screen cropping, etc.
I have heard there are hacks to change DVD players to region-free players?
Yes, but all of these come with no guarantees that they will not permanently destroy the DVD player, and all void any warranties on the product - so it is a matter of "let the tryer beware". But there is nothing illegal about using them, as the encoding system is not a matter of law but of trade agreements. While many players have their region encodings set permanently in hardware, many players are designed for all markets and only set to a particular region before they are shipped through a programmable ROM encoding, and these setting can be changed after the fact. In most cases these players allow either 1) resetting to a region-free status through keying in program commands on the remote, 2) resetting to a particular region through keying in program commands on the remote, 3) resetting to region-free status through the operation of special code burned onto a CD and played on the DVD player, and 4) resetting to a particular region through the operation of special code burned onto a CD. If you are still interested after all these warnings, you can find more information at dvdrhelp.com where you can enter any particular DVD player model into their search engine, and it will output all the information on this model from their database.
Are software DVD players region-free?
With the advent of high-quality screens on laptops, playing DVDs on the computer has become increasingly attractive, offering pictures with higher resolution than available with non-HD TVs. Although many software players are region-free, but this may not matter since all computer DVD-ROM drives have been created with DVD locking (RPC-2) since January 2000. This allows one to change the region setting to a limit of five times, after which the region encoding is permanently set. But there are software overrides that can be purchased that allow the encoding to be changed without setting it on the drive - one of these is DVD Region-Free. For those whose DVD players does not have DVD locking DVD Genie, which is freeware, will reset the drive to the desired region. There is also the freeware region-free VLC media player that has this drive override built-in; it runs on Unix, Mac, and Windows systems, and apparently the Mac and Windows version has the override built into the executables, while the Unix system requires a library installation. This media player is quite comprehensive, and covers most audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, AVI, MOV, WAV, AU, WMV, MP3, OGG, etc...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols, and can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
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