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Some basic information about region coding



DVDs contain Regional Codes which can be used to prevent the playback of certain discs depending upon the geographical area it is played in. The various studios and home video companies lobbied to make sure this coding system was a required part of the current DVD standards, because they wish to control how their DVD titles are exported to other countries. (For example, while a recent film may already have played theatrically in the United States and been released to the home video market, that same film may not yet have opened in some European or Asian countries.) In most instances, discs manufactured in one region will usually only play on players that were manufactured for that same region - this means that discs bought or imported from Japan will not play on U.S. players, and vice versa.

Some DVDs, however, are coded for Region 0 - which means they will play in any of the six regular regions. There are also DVD players that don't check the region coding of the DVD so will play any disc from any region - these are generally referred to as Code Free players.



Region Code
Where it Plays

0
Any DVD Player

1
US, US territories, Canada

2
Europe, Japan, Middle East, Egypt, South Africa, Greenland

3
Taiwan, Korea, Phillippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong

4
Mexico, South America, Central America, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Caribbean

5
Former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, India, most of Africa, North Korea, Mongolia

6
China



More Interesting

The first requirement for a LAN, of course, is at least two computers. The most popular way of meeting this requirement is to have somebody else lug a computer over to your house. With today's prices, however, it's increasingly possible to own two (or more) computers. For the rest of this article, I'll assume you have two PCs available.

The second part of making a LAN is to have some method of hooking the computers together. The simplest way to do this is to connect a null-modem cable between the serial ports of the two computers. This costs under $10 but requires a fairly complex setup: a free serial port on both computers and software which supports this type of connection. Also, a null-modem cable limits your "network" to two computers. Odds are, you'd get more mileage out of connecting your PCs via a true local area network.