British to America Video Imports?

You should have an option in the setup of your DVD player to set it to either NTSC or PAL.

In article , Ron Hubbard writes

Home recorded DVDs do not have region coding.

And all DVD players (in the UK certainly) can play back "PAL" or "NTSC" discs.

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you'd also need a tv capable of reproducing NTSC. Or at least syncing to NTSC's 60hz field rate, (most recent sets will) then you'd get a b&w picture but viewable. Ben

In article , b writes

That was true with VCRs but (most?) DVD players will produce a proper PAL or NTSC output (depending on how you set up the options)

Try news:alt.video.dvd.tech

Those burnt discs are probably in PAL. There are several cheapish DVD players here in the US that can be region hacked with the remote and can also convert PAL to NTSC on the fly. Two of them that I can think of offhand are the Philips 642 and the Magnavox 458/17. I bought both of them onsale, the Philips was $56 and the Magnavox $35.

The Magnavox will convert uncoded PAL DVDs to NTSC right out of the box. However, it favors DVD+R. It will play -R but with a very slight occasional, barely noticeable stutter. With a few button presses on the remote, you can change the region to zero. I played a Swedish commercial disc (region: 0) on it and it converted beautifully. It looked and sounded fantastic.

The Philips has a rep of being able to plow through many types of video, however, I haven't experimented with mine yet so I can't really comment. According to what I've read, you can also change the region with the remote.

Here's a site with a list of DVD players and their hack-ability:

kaboomie

DVDs don't use either PAL or NTSC. Those are both coding systems for analogue video. Talk instead about field and frame rates.

There are two issues here. First, there's the DVD region code. If they are original pressed DVDs, they will almost certainly be region 2 which won't play in an unmodified US DVD player. If they were made on a computer, or in a video DVD recorder, there will be no region code. Consumer DVD recorders don't region code the discs they make.

The second problem is the PAL/NTSC issue. DVDs are different for 525 line NTSC, or 625 line PAL. Not all US DVD players will play PAL DVDs even if there's no region code. Some DVD players will play PAL DVDs and even give you the option to view it in PAL, or have it convert it to NTSC.

Ironically, the cheap, off brand Chinese DVD players are the best way to get around both these issues. My Toshiba and Sony DVD players won't play PAL and there's no region hack that I'm aware of. My Philips DVD recorder will play PAL DVDs, but won't convert them to NTSC and there's no way around the region problem except to copy the DVD onto a DVD-R with my PC.

On the other hand, my $35 Cyberhome DVD player can be made region free by entering a code on the remote and it will convert PAL to NTSC, NTSC to PAL, or let you view it in its original form. Many other cheap DVD players I've seen will do the same thing. I've even seen a few of these DVD players in for repair because they had been changed to output PAL. Andy Cuffe

snipped-for-privacy@psu.edu

Isn't it great what happens when the movie industry and the electronics industry cooperate? Things like this just interfere with normal people's use of technology while doing nothing to stop illegal copying.

There are ways around that limitation on many DVD drives. You can replace the firmware with a region free firmware which eliminates the region counter. Windows and DVD playback software still keeps track, but there are software tools to work around that.

See if your drive is listed here:

snipped-for-privacy@psu.edu

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Thanks, for the info; it's much appreciated!

Ron

In article , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

Whilst that is technically true, and it annoys me too, commercial DVDs are sold labelled as NTSC (=60Hz field rate) or PAL (=50Hz field rate), so it looks like that misnomer is here to stay.

I picked up a Daewoo that is region free, model # DVG-5000N. I've managed to play dvd's from Australia, Great Britain and Germany so far with no problem.(NTSC to PAL via the remote control and no need to rehack or reset the region.)

On another note some brands only allow you to reset the region once or twice then it locks the region option. The hack sites usually have a work around, either a hack or a bios update.