From Luke Jackson

Summary

DVD-Video discs may be encoded with a region code intended to restrict the area of the world in which they can be played. Discs can be produced without region coding; they are sometimes referred to as region 0 discs.

The commercial DVD player specification requires that a player to be sold in a given place must not play discs encoded for a different region (region 0 discs are not restricted). The purpose of this system is to allow motion picture studios to control the various aspects of a release (including content, date and, in particular, price) according to the region. In practice many DVD players are or can be modified to be region-free, allowing playback of all discs. Entirely independent of CSS encryption, region coding pertains to regional lockout, which originated in the video game industry.

• Read more on Wikipedia about DVD Region Codes

My Opinion

My opinion is best summarized by two points. DVD Region Codes are the Motion Picture Association of America's attempt to:

1. Divide the global market into smaller more manageable markets. This is done to ensure that they can "culturalize" their propaganda for each market and "tweak" pricing.
2. Prevent cheaper priced foreign DVD's from playing on the consumers DVD player. (Typically DVDs are much cheaper in the Asian Markets)

Mac OS X

Evil Applications

DVD Player

The DVD Player Application that is included with the Mac OS X operating system enforces DVD Region Codes.

DVD players--including Apple's DVD Player--are generally limited to playing discs of only one region, usually the region where the DVD player was purchased. For example, DVD players purchased in Canada usually only play Region 1 DVD-Video discs.

The Apple DVD Player is capable of playing discs from any region. Once you play a disc, the DVD drive stores the disc's region in its memory (called firmware) and limits you to playing discs from that region. In Mac OS 9, the region is automatically assigned by the Region Manager software when the first region-encoded disc is loaded into the drive.

In Mac OS X, this dialog box appears the first time a DVD disc is inserted:

"Since this is the first use of a DVD disc, the drive region code must be initialized before playing.

"New Drive Setting: Region Code 1

"You can only change the drive region code 5 more times."

Windows XP

Evil Applications

Windows Media Player

Linux