just been handed a region 1 dvd (bought online from the uk), all my the others are PAL region 2 so i'm suspicious, will it work? (dont want to remove the packaging if it needs to go back).

I guess it depends on your DVD player. I bought mine a long time ago, and paid extra dosh to get it "chipped" so that it would play Region 1 discs (which are, in general, for the US market) as well as the Region 2 (European) discs.

Given that the main point about the region coding was to maintain licensing arrangements within sales territories, I suspect that, unless you've specifically bought your DVD player as multi-region compatible, the disc won't play. However, I gather that some PC / mac DVD players will allow you to "set" the region a number of times before locking into one.

Don't know if this helps you or not!

Check online for a "hack" for your particular player- there might be one you can use