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Originally posted by: TheSessler
Chaltab is a little slow though, Wookie.
Aw c'mon... not *everyone* knows about all that- if they did, region-free players would be the only ones out there and the only DVDs you could buy would be widescreen.
Chaltab, in a nutshell the 'Region' system was put in place to avoid piracy, at least in theory. Laserdiscs were not region encoded back in the day, nor were videotapes. The idea with DVDs was that if a film was out on DVD in, say, the USA already but just hitting theaters in Asia, then pirates and even consumers would just sell/buy the discs and the movie studios would lose money.
And you don't even have to buy a DVD player marked as 'Region-Free'. I bought a DVD player at Target for $40 that, by enter a code with the remote (exactly like a video game cheat code), 'unlocks' the player making it Region-Free AND opening it up to NTSC/PAL conversion. Speaking of...
Region codes on DVDs are an entirely different thing than the video format of NTSC versus PAL. Simply put, different countries have different currents of electricity. TV, computer monitor, video games etc create their images on-screen based on how fast the electricty flows. This is why a video game or VHS tape or DVD from most of Europe are not directly compatible with players from the USA or Asia. The GBA has it's own screen and it's own powersource and that's why no region coding... but if Nintendo really wanted to be jerks they could program it in! Swell hunh!!
Anyway, I just wanted to chime in and say don't feel stupid for not knowing this- its a lot of technical hoo-hah... but its fun to geek about at times!
