Comments | expats: DVD Compability

laira314 in expats

DVD Compability

Dec 15, 2004 13:28

My parents recently bought me a DVD player that was supposed to be "open", i. e. able to play all region DVDs. At first, it wouldn't play anything but my pirated, unencoded DVDs properly. With American DVDs, it would say wrong region, but with European and Australian DVDs it would play the DVDs, but the picture was black and white and would 'cycle ( Read more... )

technology, entertainment & arts

Comments 7

gyre December 15 2004, 11:30:04 UTC

It sounds like PAL/NTSC to me. I think that's what it looks like if you play PAL to an NTSC TV. It is possible to get a multi-region DVD player that does not do PAL/NTSC conversion, which is what it sounds like you have.

laira314 December 15 2004, 11:34:47 UTC

It is possible to get a multi-region DVD player that does not do PAL/NTSC conversion, which is what it sounds like you have.

I considered that... but I got myself confused, maybe you can help sort me out. Since the NTSC DVDs play fine, the DVD player obviously can output in NTSC. So.. when I pop in a PAL DVD, if the DVD player only could output in NTSC, wouldn't the DVD player complain? Or would it put out the garbage that I see? Or could it be that the DVD player outputs the PAL DVDs in PAL, and my TV can't handle it? How would I know the difference?

gyre December 15 2004, 11:41:01 UTC

Most likely the DVD player outputs NTSC for NTSC DVDs and PAL for PAL DVDs and the TV only does NTSC.

Some DVD players can convert PAL to NTSC for you. It is also possible to find a little box that does that. Another option is a TV that will handle PAL and NTSC. I had one when I lived in Japan but that was so it could be sold in the international market. I don't think it would switch automatically.

The easiest way to test I guess is to find a PAL TV and see how your DVD player works with it with a PAL DVD.

laira314 December 15 2004, 11:44:07 UTC

As a result of the college-grad school transition, my TV is very small, but it's sitting on a big TV bench. This could be a good excuse to buy a new TV 0:)

Thanks for the help and the quick reply!

ryuneko December 15 2004, 11:30:40 UTC

had this same problem in Kazakhstan. To solve it, I ended up taking samples of my DVD's to the store and buying a second DVD player that plays everything.

Basically, I couldn't get anyone to correctly program the region code, so ....

rjshook December 16 2004, 01:44:10 UTC

I bought a multi-region DVD player in the UK but it shipped as a Region 2 player. The store gave me the instructions needed to switch the region. (Region 0 for multi-region.) Check on the web or with the retailer to see if there is something you must do to enable multi-region capability.

PAL/NTSC issues would be evident if the disc played but if there were picture quality issues. But it seems you have that figured out.

Fuck the MPAA.

laira314 December 16 2004, 10:11:53 UTC

Fuck the MPAA.

Right in the ear. It's one thing to be a businessperson, it's another to be greedy and want to control everything. Byebye, fair use...