regional lockout

Coined by the video game community and opponents of the lockout practice. The practice originated with and was devised by the video game industry and was later adopted by the film industry with the advent of DVDs.

regional lockout (countable and uncountable, plural regional lockouts)

1. (video games, DVD) The programming practice, code, or chip used to prevent the playing of imported media on a domestically marketed device.

• regional converter
• region-free

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