There are a couple DVDs I want, but they’re only available in the UK, and I live in the US. I know there are some restrictions on DVDs in different countries, but I’m not sure what they are. What will my limitations be if I buy a DVD from the UK?

DVDs are released under different “Region Codes”, which gives the studios more control over all aspects of the release, including the ability to make sure a DVD isn’t in a country before the movie is even released in theaters. Each country is assigned a region, and DVDs with one region can’t be played on a DVD player of another region. For example, the Ally McBeal DVD I bought from the UK (Region 2) won’t play on my DVD player in the US (Region 1). Here are some of the simplest options to get around this.

You have the ability to change the region on your computer up to five times. You can go ahead and change it to the region of the DVD you bought, Handbrake it, then change back to your original region. With the Ally McBeal DVDs, we went all out an put the whole series on Apple TV. The movie companies do not believe we have the right to do this, though.

The other option is to buy a Region-Free (aka All-Region) DVD player (Region 0), and in most cases it only costs a few dollars more.

Blu-ray disks are encoded with regions A, B, C. HD-DVD disks do not have region codes.

November 5th, 2007
Categories: amazon, appletv, blu-ray, conversion, dvd, hd-dvd, rip . Author: Cali

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