WHY ARE DVD PLAYERS CODED ANYWAY?

In an ideal world, motion picture studios would benefit hugely from total control over the home release of movies in different countries. This is because theatre releases aren't simultaneous, for example - a movie may become available on DVD in the U.S. at a point when it's just opened at the cinemas in Europe. It is also a fact that studios make a lot of money by selling distribution rights to various foreign distributors, that can only be guaranteed in an exclusive market. In this case, studios demand that the DVD standard features codes to prevent viewing of certain discs in certain geographical regions.

Each player is assigned a code for the region in which it's sold, as seen on the map below. To the immense annoyance of film watchers worldwide, players will refuse to play discs that are not coded for its specific region. In effect, this means that a DVD purchased in one country is unreadable on a player bought in another region. For many people there is a belief that region codes are an illegal barrier of trade, although no legal cases have yet to establish this. We can only hope that some day soon, all players will be manufactured region free. Until that day, DVDEXPLODER endeavours to make your DVD player region free - globally.