Want to know what Region DVDs you can play here in the UK? And how about the Region Codes for Blu Ray and HD DVD? Read on, and hopefully you will find all the answers you need. 

Standard Format DVDs are broken down into the following regions. Here in the UK we have Region 2 DVDs.

REGION 1 =  USA, Canada
REGION 2 =   Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 =  S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 =  Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 =  Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6  = China
REGION 7  = Reserved for Unspecified Special Use
REGION 8  = Reserved for Cruise Ships, Airlines,
REGION 0  = Free from Regional restriction. Bear in mind however that a Region 0 DVD which works on PAL will not an NTSC DVD player

If you want to know what region any of your collection is, simply look on the back of the DVD box. There you will find a logo something like one of these:-

Why are DVDs region encoded? Quite simply for copyright reasons, and to protect a studio's investment. As I'm sure you movie fans are well aware most films are released in the USA some time ahead of the UK for instance. Obviously the studios do not want your friend in America to send you the DVD release of a movie which hasn't even hit the streets here. Hence the major reason for the coding of DVDs.

However, as usual there are lots of people out there that can bypass the region encoding on DVDs. A simple search on Google will reveal a host of DVD hacking sites. By following a few simple steps you can often find that you now have a Multi Region DVD player.

So how about HD DVD and Blu Ray?

Well HD DVD is easy, at least for the moment, as at the time of writing there is no region coding on HD DVDs. Back to my earlier point about different release dates for movies in the USA and the UK. I myself bought Disturbia on HD DVD from America several weeks before it had even been released at the cinema here. So far then it all looks good for HD DVDs. Do beware though, as there is talk of region coding being brought ino this format in the future. If your HD DVD player is connected to the internet, such as an Xbox 360, you may find that a future software update spoils the fun. Nothing definite yet, but definitely something to watch out for.

Which leaves us with Blu Ray

As you can see below the situation with Blu Ray discs is not dissimilar to that of a standard DVD, with a variety of region codes for different parts of the world.

Region A = North America, South America, Central America, Japan,South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and S.E. Asia.
Region B = Europe, Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Region C =  Russia, China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Central and South Asia

As you can see here in the UK we are Region B.

It would also seem that they manufacturers have been far more savvy with Blu Ray, and that they are not subject to the kind of DVD player hacking mentioned above.

So as you can see all in all it's a bit confusing on the face of it. But if you just remember that here in the UK we use Region 2 discs for standard DVDs, Region B for Blu Ray, and that HD DVDs are currently region free then you can't go far wrong.

I hope this guide has been of use in the muddled sea of DVD land.