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And let's not forget, that if you brought your DVD player with you, you could still play your DVD's no matter what region you were physically in.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
And if you ordered a disc from abroad, you could completely legally import a disc player from, say, the UK and play your region-locked Blu-ray Discs and DVDs that way (and still can, eBay.co.uk works fine). It's inconvenient but it does work, and is 100% legal and hack-free.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  Power, tv, and plugs different.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Or buy a worldwide player like Philips offered in the day that would play all regions
makeitdouble 4y ago
Except if your player wasn't conpatible with your TV of course. At the time DVD started prolifering more and more player and TVs had full support for NTSC, PAL and SECAM, but you could still be stuck with some hardware only supporting standard and your DVDs would be black and white or scrambled on the display side.
- arthurcolle 4y ago
- tjoff 4y ago
  True in theory but in practice it wasn't much of an issue. Especially as late as when the DVD came. And the purpose of it wasn't geo-restrictions either.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    The impact might differ a lot depending on your region and where your interests are. Living in the SECAM region and wanting to watch US/british stuff makes it a lot more prominent issue that if you're in the PAL or NTSC area for instance.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  Support for multiple analog signal formats did not become common on TVs until people started moving away from CRTs and towards flat panel LCDs and plasmas. This transition lasted a pretty long time, as both LCD and plasma presented numerous drawbacks compared to CRTs (LCDs arguably still do), and CRTs were still very cost-effective even well into the '00s. Adding support for signals used in other regions to an analog CRT display meant adding more circuitry, so this feature was largely relegated to very high end sets and professional video monitors. With digital flat panels, those analog signals were now being captured with an analog-to-digital converter. How to translate the sequence of numbers representing a formerly analog signal into something usable by the panel could now be defined in software, or even very compact digital hardware. This makes it more cost-effective to just produce one version of the decoder that works in all regions.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

And if you ordered a disc from abroad, you could completely legally import a disc player from, say, the UK and play your region-locked Blu-ray Discs and DVDs that way (and still can, eBay.co.uk works fine). It's inconvenient but it does work, and is 100% legal and hack-free.

mixmastamyk 4y ago
Power, tv, and plugs different.
ipaddr 4y ago
Or buy a worldwide player like Philips offered in the day that would play all regions

makeitdouble 4y ago

Except if your player wasn't conpatible with your TV of course. At the time DVD started prolifering more and more player and TVs had full support for NTSC, PAL and SECAM, but you could still be stuck with some hardware only supporting standard and your DVDs would be black and white or scrambled on the display side.

arthurcolle 4y ago
tjoff 4y ago
True in theory but in practice it wasn't much of an issue. Especially as late as when the DVD came. And the purpose of it wasn't geo-restrictions either.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  The impact might differ a lot depending on your region and where your interests are. Living in the SECAM region and wanting to watch US/british stuff makes it a lot more prominent issue that if you're in the PAL or NTSC area for instance.
babypuncher 4y ago
Support for multiple analog signal formats did not become common on TVs until people started moving away from CRTs and towards flat panel LCDs and plasmas. This transition lasted a pretty long time, as both LCD and plasma presented numerous drawbacks compared to CRTs (LCDs arguably still do), and CRTs were still very cost-effective even well into the '00s. Adding support for signals used in other regions to an analog CRT display meant adding more circuitry, so this feature was largely relegated to very high end sets and professional video monitors. With digital flat panels, those analog signals were now being captured with an analog-to-digital converter. How to translate the sequence of numbers representing a formerly analog signal into something usable by the panel could now be defined in software, or even very compact digital hardware. This makes it more cost-effective to just produce one version of the decoder that works in all regions.