Where to buy multi-regional DVD players

Upon their initial release, DVD players would be locked to certain regions of the world which meant that a DVD bought in a different region could not be played on a DVD player with a different region code. This was implemented by a number of different manufacturers for many and varied reasons which will be detailed briefly. This article will show you where to buy multi-regional DVD players.

What are the regions and why implement them?

There are seven main DVD region codes that DVDs and some DVD players are set to. For instance, region one disks and players are set for Canada, United States, Bermuda and other US territories. Region two includes all of Europe (aside from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus), Japan, Egypt, Middle East, Swaziland, Lesotho, Greenland, South Africa and the French Overseas departments and territories. The other five regions are similarly broken up. What does this mean exactly? If you were to buy a region one DVD in America, it wouldn't play on your region two player in the United Kingdom. Whilst this was initially true, as cheaper known brand-named DVD players hit the market, these were set with no regions whatsoever - that is, if you bought one of these players in the United Kingdom, you could play a disk on it from anywhere in the world. Why was this implemented in the first place? The main reasons for the use of region codes was part of digital rights management by film distributors to allow them to specify things such as different content for different countries, price and release dates. Indeed, many of the higher end brand named DVD players still released today will still have region encoding in them. Many of the lower end (but still equally as good in some aspects) players do not use this at all.

Where to buy and what to look for

There are a number of things that you should try and research before buying a new multi-region DVD player. First of these is ensuring that it really is a
multi-region player. Secondly is to check out reviews online - be sure to get a balance of impartial and independent reviews couple with those of people who already own the product. Places to buy:
- Play.com - Argos.co.uk - Amazon.co.uk - Dabs.co.uk