> Try watching a European VHS cassette in North America (or vice versa).

That's not a georestriction, but a difference in media protocols. You could easily buy a compatible VCR. Heck, in some countries, Japan marketed VCRs that supported both PAL and NTSC (I had one of those) because those countries would have a significant influx of VHSs from both Europe and America.

It's like saying the choice of 110 vs 220V (or 120 vs 240V) is a "georestriction".

You could easily buy a region-free DVD player too.

This would actually be a plausible excuse for region locking. If the MPEG stream were somehow optimized for NTSC/PAL.

If course the most likely reason is corporate greed, but it's also fun to consider other possibilities. Another hypothetical reason would be for sales in Islamic nations where certain content is prohibited. They could show the government censors that there is some level enforcement to prevent "illegal media" from being easily watched. Whereas without it, the government could have potentially made DVDs illegal in their entire nation. I'm trying to see this through the lens of the design committee back in the early 90s.

That was due to fundamental differences in standards[1] though. This isn't the case with DVD onwards (mostly).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-definition_television