There is a whole world of crappy coding schemes, IP protection, digital rights management is the latest one form Micro$crew. The reason the "DVD region system" was devised was to maximise profits in all areas of the world. The cost of DVDs in say Lagos would be cheaper, because if you charge £20 a go no-one would buy, so they charge £4 a go. But they still wanted to rip off everyone in the US, UK, Japan etc, so the region system made it so that you had to pay lots of money to watch a DVD in England and can't just buy a cheep one abroad. There is no secret behind being able to play everything, all you have to do is ignore all the extra crap, like DRM. The expensive ones have all these extra chips inside that do not play if you put a certain type of disk in. You might find that the cheap one also has a 'video out' that does not go green if you put it through another recording device. DRM works by asking Micro$crew if I can play this now? Very soon you will need an internet connection just to make sure Micro$crew is letting you turn on your bathroom light. Or, you could just ignore this and decode the data anyway, which is what happens in cheap devices, f*cking bargain if you ask me (save money and you don't have to worry about other crap).