@John
Given your addition above, I guess you are American (NYC?).
For you, I'm sure the region coding isn't an issue at all. You live in region 1.
For Region-2 dwellers (most of Europe), there is an entirely different world.
Releases are up to a year later in the shops. If they appear at all. Often they are sent through a local distributor, who to allow for different language dubbing, strips off such useless things as DTS sound (or even worse: Recompresses the AC3 track to save space!), so there are three options:
-Late arrival
-Late and massacred arrival
-No arrival at all.
All three pushes consumers against getting region-1 coded discs. But the movie industry decided that they wanted to protect their fellow conspirators in the distribution network. And to do that, they introduced the region coding in the first place. This way, a player bought in, say, Norway or the UK, could only play Region-2 stuff that had increased profits of the local scam-houses re-packaging the film (and, often destroying soundtracks and/or video quality to reduce costs). _THIS_ is why you will find that almost EVERY European has bought, or is considering, a region-free player (in some countries shops are even forced by law, to MARK those players that are not region free). And I'm not the least bit suprised an American wouldn't see the point, since he's alredy in Region-1
The real issue here, is that most Americans think "worldwide" means 50 states. Sorry.
//Svein
p.s. Where's the MAFIAA icon?