Blu-ray region coding and the legacy of HD DVD

While I’m not going to launch in to a rant about HD DVD’s demise, one clear advantage it had over Blu-ray for those living outside the US was its region free approach. You could buy an HD DVD from anywhere and have complete confidence that it would work in your HD DVD player.

The same can’t be said of Blu-ray discs, which are often region coded. Admittedly, the Blu-ray Disc association has rationalised its regions – there are now only 3 regions, compared with 8 for DVDs.

As the Blu-ray vs HD DVD war was coming to an end, I wondered to myself whether the HD DVD aligned studios, namely Universal, Paramount/Dreamworks, Weinstein as well as the format neutral Warner Bros and Magnolia Studios would continue to release Blu-ray discs without region locking. As they’d undertaken to release discs with no region coding on HD DVD, why should their stance change?

For the most part, it hasn’t. For those looking to buy their Blu-rays from the US, it’s a safe bet that any Universal, Magnolia or Warner title you buy will be region free.

Paramount’s a different story however. While the majority of Paramount’s titles are region free, some of their new premium releases (Sapphire Series), and TV series are region A locked. These include:

• Braveheart
• CSI (Season 1)
• Dexter (Seasons 2-4) (a shame, frankly, as these aren't yet available in other regions)
• Gladiator
• Paranormal Activity

Dreamworks has one locked title, Minority Report.

Weinstein has also locked a few of their titles:

• Halloween (2007)
• Hell Ride
• Lucky Number Slevin

As for the studios which backed Blu-ray from the beginning, it’s reasonable to assume that one of the reasons they backed Blu-ray was so that they could region lock their titles.

The major studios in this camp included:

• Buena Vista (Disney)
• Disney
• 20th Century Fox
• HBO
• Lionsgate
• New Line
• Sony

Most of the studios in this group region lock the majority of their titles, but there are some exceptions. Disney is particularly fussy about region locking its animated classic titles such as Show White, Dumbo, Pinocchio and the like, which it releases once every ten years.

As for the other studios, most titles are region locked, but some aren’t. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern. Fox locked all of its titles until last year, when all of a sudden, a slew of region free titles has been released. Go figure.

If you’re unsure whether a title is region locked, you could check one of the many sites on the web which list the region status of Blu-ray titles.

I’ve found that the most reliable and current is liesinc. Or you can support the studios that support region free, and buy exclusively Universal and Warner titles (with the occasional Paramount movie, but not TV series(!), thrown in).