There's this special of a TV show that I want to buy. The problem is, the only way to buy it legally is a DVD. However, the DVD was only released in the U.K., and I live in the United States, so I'll have to buy it on Amazon U.K. and import it, but I'm a little hesitant on doing that. I've never imported anything from another country before, o I want to make sure I don't mess anything up.

Is buying something off of Amazon U.K. and shipping it to my house in the United States done the exact same way as buying something off of the U.S. Amazon or is the process more involved? Will my U.S. Amazon account work with Amazon U.K.? Is there anything else I should know before importing this DVD? Will the price be higher?

Generally, yeah, ordering from another country works the same way as ordering from your own country. The only exceptions are that shipping will likely be a lot more expensive and that you might have to pay customs on arrival of the package. Hard to estimate how expensive these will be, but I'd say something between 15% and 30% of the price of the goods you ordered can be expected (though cheap goods are also often free of customs, at least from my experience, so if it's just a single average-priced DVD, you might be fine). Of course shipping will also likely take a lot longer, unless you go with the more expensive shipping options, but those are usually dramatically more expensive (for example, it's not unusual to see something like $10 for the cheapest shipping method and $50 for the most expensive one - though in a lot of cases, expensive shipping options include pre-paid customs, which is definitely a plus). Basically, if you go with the cheap shipping options, expect to be waiting for at least two to three weeks.

You should be able to order from Amazon UK with your Amazon US acount, yeah. Amazon should have an international account system. I've used my Amazon Germany account plenty of times to order from Amazon US, so I'm pretty sure other combinations work just as well.

Another important thing to be aware of that applies to your specific situation: Commercial DVDs are actually region-locked. That is, DVDs have a region code on them and can only be played back on devices with the same region code. Unfortunately, the US and the UK have two different region codes for DVDs, so if you are going to order these DVDs, you likely won't be able to play them out-of-the-box. You will need either a region-free DVD player for that or a DVD player with the UK region code. In the US, it's very unlikely that you would randomly have either of those at home, so if you end up ordering the DVDs, you will likely also have to order a region-free DVD player from somewhere. Note that this region-locking also applies to DVD drives in PCs, so don't expect to get around the region-locking simply by playing the DVD back on a PC.

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Whoa, are you serious? So even if I actually get the DVD, I might not be able to play it? But that's so stupid and unfair! This DVD is the ONLY way to watch this special legally! It's not on DVD in the U.S.A. nor is it on Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, ITunes, or any of the streaming services!

Will it work on an American PlayStation 4 or 5 or XBOX One or Series X? I think I read somewhere that those systems are region free. I know the Nintendo Switch is.

However, I remember one time when I watched a DVD on my computer's disc drive, it said something about a region and that I could change it, but only 5 times, so I'll have to change it to the U.K. region to watch this DVD, but then I won't want to change it back to the American region to watch my American DVDs, so I'll have to watch them on a different device.

Also, will the DVD run differently than I'm used to? Will it run slower? I've read that European video games will run slower on American hardware. Is the same true for DVDs?

Yup, that's the unfortunate part about region-locking.

I'm not sure about PlayStation or Xbox, but from my quick Google search, it seems like the same restrictions apply to them. While both consoles are technically region-free, this only seems to apply to the games that can be played on them. DVDs and Blu-rays are still region-locked (I assume that this region-locking is something that the DVD and Blu-ray licensors require when issuing licenses to other companies).

And yeah, I think you're correct. I remember seeing the same thing on my PC a couple of times. I assume all DVD and Blu-ray players for PCs have this setting and allow you to change the region a limited amount of times. So presumeably, you should be able to change the region on your drive, then watch the special (maybe even rip it to your PC, I'm guessing there exists tools for it), and then change the region back whenever you need it. Who knows, there might even be other ways of viewing region-locked DVDs that I'm not familiar with.

As for the last question, not sure. Technically, Europe does/did have a different TV standard than the US, running at 50 Hz rather than 60 Hz, and it's very possible that DVDs are affected by that to some degree. I did read on some occasions that when airing shows from NTSC regions on TVs in PAL regions, some adjustments need to be made. However, I don't know if DVDs are affected by that. Even if they are, I don't think it'll be a problem when viewing the DVD on a PC. I think PC media players are pretty good at dealing with varying frame rates and just skip or add extra frames as needed to make the video work on your system. At worst, the video might appear a bit unsmooth or stuttery, but I think even that isn't necessarily the case. So the region-locking will likely be the only real problem.

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Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!