Country codes on DVDs
In order to keep control over the copyright of the films, the film industry has divided the individual countries of the world into regions for the international distribution of films.
In each of these regions, the DVDs are encoded differently. This coding is called a country code or region code. DVD-Player only accept the country code that is valid in the region. This is to prevent overlapping times between cinema and home cinema. Because in some countries films appear much earlier than in others.
Another reason is the protection of minors, because different youth protection laws apply in the USA than in Germany.
So how are import DVDs to be evaluated?
According to the film industry, nothing speaks against transnational trade in DVDs within a (code) region. Accordingly, for us, buying is one DVD no problem in England.
However, there are now so-called codefree-DVD players capable of interpreting other country codes as well.
An overview of the current country codes:
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Code 1: USA, Canada
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Code 2: Japan, Europe, South Africa
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Code 3: Southeast Asia
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Code 4: Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, Caribbean
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Code 5: India, Africa, North Korea, Russia
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Code 6: China