Chapter 1

18 Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About DVD
• 2002
• 17 million DVD-Video players shipped in the United States (an
installed base of 43,718,000)
• Over 75 million DVD-ROM drives in the United States
• Over 140 million DVD-ROM drives worldwide
For comparison, in 1997 about 700 million audio CD players and 160 million
CD-ROM drives were in use worldwide. That same year 1.2 billion
CD-ROMs were shipped worldwide with about 46,000 different titles available.
About 80 million VCRs were owned in the United States (89 percent of
households), with about 400 million worldwide, and 110,000 VCRs shipped
in the first two years after their release. Nearly 16 million VCRs were
shipped in 1998. In 2000, about 270 million TVs were owned in the United
States, with 1.3 billion worldwide. When DVDs came out in 1997, under 3
million laserdisc players were being used in the United States.
For the latest U.S. player sales statistics, see the CEA page at The Digital
Bits. Other DVD statistics and forecasts can be found at IRMA, Media-
Line, and Twice. Industry analyses and forecasts can be purchased from
Adams Media Research, the British Video Association, Cahners In-stat,
eBrain, IDC, Screen Digest, Understanding & Solutions, and others.
What Are Regional Codes, Country Codes, or Zone Locks?
Motion picture studios want to control the home release of movies in different
countries because theater releases aren’t simultaneous (a movie may
come out on video in the United States when it’s just hitting screens in
Europe). Also, studios sell distribution rights to different foreign distributors
in order to guarantee an exclusive market. Therefore, they required that the
DVD standard include codes to prevent the playback of certain discs in certain
geographical regions. Each player is given a code for the region in
which it’s sold and will refuse to play discs that are not coded for its region.
This means that a disc bought in one country may not play on a player
bought in another country. Some people believe that region codes are an
illegal restraint of trade, but no legal cases have established this.
Regional codes are entirely optional for the disc maker to include. Discs
without region locks will play on any player in any country. It’s not an
encryption system; it’s just one byte of information on the disc that the
player checks. Some studios originally announced that only their new releases
would have regional codes, but so far almost all Hollywood releases
play in only one region. Region codes are also a permanent part of the disc,
and they won’t unlock after a period of time. Region codes don’t apply to
DVD-Audio, DVD-ROM, or recordable DVDs.