We have known for some time now that the Blu-ray High definition format was to be regionally encoded. Currently this encoding divides the world into three regions; Region 1: the US and Japan, Region 2: Europe and Africa, Region 3: China Russia and other countries.

Much confusion reigned however with studios such as Warner for example having an unwritten policy of not encoding Blu-ray discs. Sony on the other hand are encoding discs, but with very little accuracy – a disc labelled as one region may actually play in another.

At the recent consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas the waters began to get even muddier on the question of region encoding for Blu-ray discs. Blu-ray disc group spokesperson Andy Parsons stated that “Regional coding is optional, and we intend for discs to be properly labelled” so all the confusion cleared up then …

To confuse matters even more, certain hybrid discs are in circulation such as ‘Superman Returns’ which include the DVD as well as the HD DVD version of the movie on the same disc and as a result are being region encoded.

Current HD DVD players do not use region encoding, but rumblings from the DVD forum (responsible for setting DVD standards) have suggested that region encoding will be introduced for HD DVD sometime during 2007.

Even if consumers are tempted to rush out and buy a region free Toshiba HD DVD, they could be forced to implement a firmware upgrade on their players to make them regionally encoded. New HD DVD discs could then be formatted to play only on the machines which had received this upgrade.

In the meantime, consumers will still buy HD players and HD discs because we all love this new technology which gives us a close to true cinema experience in the home, but manufacturers and studios have at best not endeared themselves to the general buying public, and at worst …