regions are a coding that they put on dvds so they "cant" be imported to other countries. This mostly happens because some movies will be out in theaters in one place while its being released in another on the big screen. studios want to keep people going to the theaters so they "prevent" you from playing a region 2 (uk and what not) on a region 1 (america) dvd player.

Now the thing about it is that it ends up screwing people who want to just see movies that wont ever be imported into the us or other countries for that matter. So region free dvd players have been all the rage... also there are a number of programs that will let you play dvds of any region on your computer.

hope that helps.