• NTSC / All Regions - These DVDs will play on any DVD player in any part of the world.

• NTSC / Region 1 - These DVDs will play on any DVD player in the U.S. and Canada. They will also play on any DVD player that is specifically designed to play DVDs encoded for any region.

About Regional Codes
DVD discs contain Regional Codes which can be used to prevent the playback of certain discs depending upon the geographical area it is played in. The various studios and home video companies lobbied to make sure this coding system was a required part of the current DVD standards, because they wish to control how their DVD titles are exported to other countries. The DVD regions are:

• Region 1 - The U.S., U.S. territories and Canada
• Region 2 - Europe, Japan, the Middle East, Egypt, South Africa, Greenland
• Region 3 - Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong
• Region 4 - Mexico, South America, Central America, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands,
• Caribbean
• Region 5 - Russia (okay, former Russia), Eastern Europe, India, most of Africa, North Korea, Mongolia
• Region 6 - China

If you purchase a DVD that is encoded for a region outside of your own region, you must be certain that your DVD player is designed to play DVDs that are encoded for any region.

NTSC versus PAL
The NTSC (National Television System Committee) format is the standard DVD format for all of North America. The PAL format is standard in Europe and elsewhere. About 95% of PAL DVD players can also play NTSC, but NTSC players cannot play PAL DVDs.