Are Blu-ray and HD-DVD Discs Region Coded, Like DVDs?

Question: Are Blu-ray and HD-DVD Discs Region Coded, Like DVDs?

NOTICE: HD-DVD is now officially discontinued. However, information on HD-DVD, and its comparison to Blu-ray, is still contained in this article for historical purposes, as well as the fact that there are still many HD-DVD player owners, and HD-DVD players and discs will continue to be sold and traded on the secondary market for some time.

Answer: Blu-ray has instituted a Region Coding scheme, however, it is more logical than current DVD Region Codes.

For Blu-ray Discs, there are three regions, designated as follows:

Region A: U.S., Japan, Latin America, East Asia (except China).

Region B: Europe, Africa, Australia, New Zealand

Region C: China, Russia, Remaining countries.

HD-DVD had indicated the possibility of, but never announced a specific Region Coding for its format. As a result, HD-DVD disc titles were never region coded.

In addition, regardless of the Region Coding question, the consumer also needs to take into consideration the technical differences between various television and video systems.

While North America, Japan, and Latin America employ an NTSC-based 30 Frames-per-second video system, most of the rest of the world is employs a PAL-based system with 25 frames-per-second. In addition, some of the other technical standards in use for audio processing and video processing could vary.

This means that an HD-DVD disc, even though not region coded, from another part of the World, may not necessarily play on a North American HD-DVD player or vice versa, but many do.

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