E-Male

I know the first part is true...about different file types not playing.

Not sure if the second part is true. Weren't all/aren't all electronics made in asia anyways. At what point did that all shift and exacly what is the time frame. Seems to me most electronics have been made in Asia now since the eighties or so and I think we didn't start seeing DVD's until what, early nineties?

The first DVD players only played MGEG2 files which is the standard filetype on a DVD-disc. They only played factory made ones though, not the ones you burned yourself. Then they started to play DVD-R discs if you had an MPEG2 file compiled in DVD format on it.
It was only later that they started to make players that could handle different file formats. This was marketed as an added feature since it required more of the player than simply playback of a DVD standard disc. You needed some sort of video decoder and a way to handle the file system on the disc.