Why are BD's & DVD's Region-coded?

[Anthony P]

I included the Vinyl/CD reference only because they were NOT region coded media formats...

As mentioned by others Music is not as sensitive, but the issue is that they came out a long time ago and there is nothing in music that is newer. RC did not exist then and it was not an issue as it is today where it is easy to order a movie that came out in the UK, you could not order an LP or a CD that came out in the UK back when those formats came out. And as ryoohki pointed out newer music media do have regionalization up to a point.

[88al88]

FYI Though I'm glad Blu-Ray won HD-DVD was region free. DVD had 8 regions which is ridiculous. At least Blu-ray has 3 now.

Blu-ray discs may be encoded with a region code, however this is not mandatory and around two-thirds of all released discs are region free. As of July 2008, about 66.7% of Blu-ray discs are region free and 33.3% use region codes.

Blu-ray Discs may be encoded with a region code, intended to restrict the area of the world in which they can be played, similar in principle to the DVD region codes, although the used geographical regions differ. Blu-ray Disc players sold in a certain region may only play discs encoded for that region. This is primarily used for market segmentation, or price segregation, but it also allows motion picture studios to control the various aspects of a release (including content and release date) according to the region. Discs may also be produced without region coding, so they can be played on all devices. The countries of the major Blu-ray manufacturers (Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, etc.) are in the same region as North America. As of late 2008, almost 70% of all released discs were region-free.

Major studios have different region coding policies. Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios have released all of their titles region free. Sony Pictures and Warner Bros have released most of their titles region free, but titles released by Warner's New Line division were, initially, region-coded but subsequently have been released without being locked. Titles released by other labels on behalf of New Line are still subject to some region locking. Lionsgate and Walt Disney Pictures have released a mix of titles that were region free and region coded. 20th Century Fox has released all but three of their titles region coded.