The DVD people successfully lobbied to have regional codings on DVDs when the technology first became available. This means that Region 2 DVDs may not play in a Region 1 DVD player. The bottom line is that this was supposed to prevent piracy. Here’s the regions
* Region 1: US and Canada
* Region 2: Western Europe, Japan, Middle East, and South Africa
* Region 3: Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia)….a hotbed of piracy.
* Region 4: Latin America and Australia
* Region 5: Russia, Africa and India (this is pretty much the “everything else region”)….again a hotbed of piracy.
* Region 6: China (probably the #1 area for piracy; I saw plenty of pirated software, music, and movies being sold when I was over there).
Doing a search on Ebay for “Region Free DVD Player” shows 200+ matches. However I’m not so sure why I would want a region free DVD player, unless I wanted to watch some obscure British comedy only manufactured in the UK.
I think if the CD people had their way, they would have manufactured regional encodings into CDs.
Also, while searching on half.com, I found this peculiar description of the new Indiana Jones DVD:
bq. Get this amazing Indiana Jones collection now! This brand new set is from Asia [read pirated] and will play on all U.S. players. All movies play in english and will make a great addition to your collection. Please look at my feedback [actually he made his feedback private, so you can’t see the 17 negative comments left during the past 6 months] to see the amazing satisfaction from my other customers. If you have any questions feel free to email me. This set contains all 3 action packed movies. This set is not the boxed set but contains all of the movies. The movies are not sealed but are brand new and have never been viewed. The cover art is slightly different [scanned] as well, but basically the same.