Region 1 DVDs in Region 2
 

'Scuse my ignorance!....

Does anyone know: if I (or someone else) create a DVD in the US (Region 1), will it play correctly in a DVD player someone in Scotland (Region 2) would have?

My apologies if this question has been answered somewhere else. Please point me to that and I'll look there.

Thanks.

-- Will

This might have been answered before elsewhere, but bascially, it depends on what kind of DVD player the person in Scotland has. The DVD you make in the States is not only encoded as Region 1, but also outputs an NTSC signal. Region-free, NTSC-PAL enabled DVD players are much more popular internationally than they are in the States. If he has this kind of DVD player, then it will play your disc. If he doesn't, then it won't.

I would recommend that everyone buy a region-free DVD player the next time they are upgrading (they are really no more expensive than the standard DVD players). Your selection of movies will increase exponentially, and you will be empowered to see movies that the American press and distributors have decided you don't care about. The more people that start to buy DVD's internationally, the more these money-men will catch on and start to make this movies available here.

Thanks!
 

Thanks for the info! I'll have to keep an eye out for a DVD player like you suggest for myself, also.

AFAIK, region coding is something you specifically must add to a DVD. So unless you put region codes on your DVD's for some marketing reason, then there should be no issue playing them anywhere.

That sounds reasonable.

So, is region encoding something the Hollywood movie industry does, but that probably no one else bothers with?

I can't imagine why most other video producers would want to limit where their videos could be played.

DVDs produced with consumer type hardware and software probably don't have region encoding, then, I guess. I suppose that's what Region 0 coding is -- plays in all regions.

we had a big thread on this a year or two ago, do a search.

afaik, region coding is not part of the dvd-r, dvd+r, etc., standards... you could use the best authoring technology that hollywood has to offer, and you still wouldn't get region coding capability with those formats.

Will,

The region encoding has to do with licensing of the films. It's a way for the studios to control the distribution of their films around the world and protect their theatrical/DVD revenue. Or, it's a way for them to price-gouge certain markets, while dumping cheap DVD packages into other less profitable ones. A DVD company might not want to encode their disc for a particular region (because, of course, they could make more money if they didn't), but usually DVD distributors are only sold the rights to the film for one region. For example, a company like the Criterion Collection usually only owns the licenses to sell their films on DVD in North American, Region 1; which is why you can look on Amazon.co.uk and find the same films in different versions. Many films which are available elsewhere have been deemed unprofitable by whoever holds the rights to the films in North America. And vice-versa, though less often. From a consumer stand-point, region-encoding is extremely prohibitive.