Your door to the world of DVD ... where we don't talk over your head.
Zones
The Purpose of zones are mainly for the sake of the movie studios, to keep movies
from being widely spread into countries that the specific movie has not been released in.
For instance, many movies are out in North America, finished in theatres, and available to buy
before they are in, or finished in theatres in other countries. So to keep the movie
out of the home market due to importing, zoning makes the movie not yet released in that
country unplayable on the local players until the the studio releases it for that zone.
The Drawbacks are mainly for the movie buyers who enjoy imported/foriegn films. With
zoning the person wishing to purchase the movie may have to wait longer for the film
to be released in their specific zone. Smaller studios may although not choose to release
a film in all zones, or if a movie does not do well in one zone, it may not get released in
others.
However, DVDs can be released coded for several zones or even all. Players have been
known to be imported, allowing those purchasing them to watch movies released in the
same country as the player was released in. And on the not so legal end of things, some
players have been "hacked" into allowing them to play movies from all or several zones.
The map below shows the 6 zones in which the world of DVD has been divided into.
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