It's worse. The differences between NTSC and PAL are technical and resulted from different countries adopting different broadcast standards. There isn't such an incompatibility with HD video, so they imposed an artificial one. The DVD region codes and Blu-ray region codes are entirely artificial, enforced by the manufacturers and movie studios to enforce price discrimination and staggered release schedules. My country has even ruled that DVD region codes contravene fair trade laws. That, along with the byzantine DRM schemes they employ, is the reason I won't buy a Blu-ray player until the system is thoroughly hacked and it's as trivial — and as inexpensive — to deregionify and copy a Blu-ray disc as it is to do the same to a DVD at present.

Can't wait until they realise that preventing consumers from making copies and suchlike is harmless to their business, and preventing professional pirates from making copies and suchlike is impossible to do with DRM.