Blu-ray Region Codes

What Blu-ray region codes are

Blu-ray region codes are a playback lock with two halves. Every Blu-ray player and Blu-ray-equipped computer system is required to enforce regional coding, according to the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) as summarized by Wikipedia, but content providers are not required to flag their discs. A disc flagged only for Region B will not play in a Region A player, while an unflagged or ABC disc is meant to play in any region. The scheme is a simplified descendant of DVD region coding: Home Cinema Guide counts ten DVD codes (six defined zones, two additional locations and two for unlocked discs), against 3 region letters (A, B, C) for Blu-ray.

Region A, B and C

Disney's studio help page gives the short version. Region A covers North, Central and South America, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia. Region B covers Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. Region C covers Russia, India, China and the rest of the world. Wikipedia's longer list adds the edge cases: Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan and Oceania outside Australia and New Zealand sit in A, most of Europe sits in B except Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Moldova, and Central Asia, Mongolia, the Indian subcontinent and Kazakhstan sit in C. The practical consequence is that a US buyer (Region A) importing a UK disc (Region B) can hit a lock, because the two sit in different regions.

How common the lock is

Less common than the letters suggest. Wikipedia reports estimates that about 70% of major-studio movie Blu-rays are region free, and Home Cinema Guide repeats the 70% figure for all Blu-ray discs. Treat it as an estimate, not a measurement. By the same estimate, roughly 30% of discs still carry a flag.

Studio habits differ. Wikipedia lists Universal and Warner Bros. as nearly always region free, Paramount as occasionally locking but never printing the A, B, C logos on domestic releases, and Fox and Sony as more frequent users of region flags (domestic releases Region A locked, international ones free). The Criterion Collection uses US region coding on its US Blu-rays and UK coding on its UK releases. Several of these points are marked as needing citations on Wikipedia, so check the back cover of the specific disc instead of relying on studio reputation.

Reading the disc and the player

Home Cinema Guide says the region is printed on the back of the box and on the disc itself, in small type that you may need to look for. Wikipedia describes the informal FREE marking as a disc with either no flags set or all 3 region flags set, and warns that a disc with no flags may fail in a non-compliant player. Unlike DVD, Blu-ray region checks are verified only by the player software, not by the optical drive firmware, and Home Cinema Guide notes that manufacturers install firmware that enforces the region the player was sold in.

Home Cinema Guide notes that you generally cannot buy a region-free Blu-ray player, because manufacturers must implement the coding, with exceptions where law forbids it: in Australia and Hong Kong, it says, installing region-locking software in players is illegal, so unrestricted players are sold there. Third-party modifications exist, but the manufacturer will not support them. Manufacturer pages show how plain the default is: Samsung's support note says both the player and the discs are coded by region, and that its Region A player plays Region A and Region Free Blu-rays plus Region 1 DVDs. The same page lists BD-ROM as single-sided 25 GB or 50 GB discs.

Ultra HD Blu-ray: no official region coding

Ultra HD Blu-ray (50 GB, 66 GB and 100 GB discs, 3840 x 2160 pixels, read with a 405 nm laser like standard Blu-ray) does not officially use region coding, per Wikipedia, although it notes some releases have been reported to prevent playback conditionally based on player region. Home Cinema Guide states the ordinary case flatly: 4K UHD Blu-ray discs do not have region coding, the end of region codes for new discs. The region-coded discs are the older kind: the BDA's own white paper specifies 1920 x 1080 video at a 40 Mbps maximum for the standard BD-ROM format, while UHD carries HDR video at up to 60 progressive frames per second. That does not make the players region free. A UHD player still enforces region on standard Blu-rays and DVDs, because it plays them too, so a foreign 1080p disc fails on a UHD player just as it would on an older one. Wikipedia lists UHD playback on Xbox One X, Xbox One S, Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 (disc models), and since those consoles also play standard Blu-rays, region locks on 1080p discs still apply to them. The first UHD Blu-ray discs were released in the United States on 14 February 2016.

Worked example

A viewer in Texas (Region A) wants a British boxed set. Step one: read the spec on the retailer page for the format. If it is a 4K UHD disc, the region letters do not apply and any UHD player plays it. Step two, for a 1080p disc: look for the A, B or C flag; Region B fails on a Region A player and Region ABC or FREE plays. Step three: check the audio and HDR format against your gear, since a region-free disc can still need Dolby TrueHD decoding or a Dolby Vision-capable display.

Read next: Ultra HD Blu-ray, disc vs streaming bitrate and the used gear buying guide if you are importing players.