hi there dear researchers~

if i were to purchase a dvd in the united states and send it over to a
friend in russia, would that person be able to view the dvd on their
pc or tv with the dvd equipment that is widely available there?

thank you in advance!

Good Day banchan-ga,


If you send a North American DVD anywhere outside North America, it
will not be playable on the local DVD players. All DVDs are encoded
for specific regions. There are six regions all together:

Code    Location

  1     USA, Canada & US Territories  
  2     Europe, Japan, South Africa, Middle East (including Egypt)
  3     South East Asia, East Asia
  4     Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Central & South America,
Caribbean and
        Pacific Islands.  
  5     Former Soviet Union, Indian Subcontinent, Africa, North Korea,
and
        Mongolia
  6     China

Source: Europe-DVD: Regional Coding - What is it?
URL: http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Contrib/EuropeDVD/regional.html

The same goes for VHS tapes.

There are services out there which will convert from one type of
encoding to a different. It might take a little effort to find someone
who will convert DVDs (VHS conversion are readily available), but it
is possible. I would guess that converting a DVD would cost about
$15-$20 in the US. A writable DVD disc is anywhere between $5-$8 US,
plus service cost of course.

Hope this helps. If not, please ask for a clarification before rating
my answer.

Search Strategy: Google search terms "dvd format", "europe", "asia",
"regional
                 encoding"


Regards,
slawek-ga

thank you for your kind and quick answer!

If its not a suprise I'd ask your friend to look into it.  Many DVD
players in the Russian / CIS market have no region code.  That is,
they will play all region codes. I don't think this is true with
laptops.  He just needs to make sure he gets a "region free" player,
or check to see if he has one.

Chris

Still, the DVD might not play. The DVD might expect the a certain
"response" from the player. If it does not get it, it won't play. It
would depend on the DVD at that point. Also, the picture resolution of
each system is a little different. So there is a chance things still
won't work...