PAL DVD on USA player?

If you are going to the trouble to protect your region counter you might as well just copy the DVD to your hard drive using software that will make it region free. It's no less legal than not having to change your drive's region is it?

In message , MeatPlow@?.?.invalid writes

If the region coding of your DVD doesn't match that of the DVD drive, you can't play it or explore its contents until you have changed the drive coding. However, as I suggested, if you run DVD43 in the background, you should be able to play it and copy it without any problems. [Note: As installed, by default, DVD43 runs at start-up, but you can easily block that, and run it only when required.]

Generally true. There are a few exceptions, though. Some higher-end DVD players contain frame-rate converters, which can do an on-the-fly conversion from the PAL format (encoding and frame-rate) to NTSC or HDMI. It isn't necessary to have a PAL-capable television (although you may get better results if you do, and just disable the frame-rate and format conversions in the player).

These players are also usually "region-free" or region-selectable. There aren't many manufacturers of these, they tend to be lesser-known names ("boutique" brands such as Oppo), and you won't tend to find these players in local stores, but they *are* available.

Several years ago someone brought me one to look at for them, which cost them $50 at Radio Shack. It was a progressive scan unit and had the ability to switch between PAL/NTSC/Autosystem TVs. It was locked to zone

1. It had a 100-240 volt autoswitching power supply.

The exact same unit, under the same brand name was sold by several stores online that catered to the Indian population. It was "zone free". Unlocking codes could be found on the net with a quick search.

Geoff.

See, this is the problem with Phil. When he's right he's right, but usually he's just bat shit crazy wrong.

The "TV" output on an NTSC player couldn't possibly output a PAL signal, and who is even using those outputs anymore anyway? The digital output of a player HDMI or Component output is straight digital data and it could care less if the disk is intended for a particular region and it doesn't know anything about PAL or NTSC.

I have a region free player that puts out HDMI data no matter what the source disk claims to be its' format. I'll bet if I hooked up the the NTSC output it will have as good a picture as the source can provide also. All a DVD has on it is data, what the player DOES to that data is the magic. Up scaling, output format, and so on are just things that are done to the data after it has been pulled off the disk.

True, but... Wouldn't the component output have to match the scanning rate of the particular TV it's connected to?

The question I asked still has not been answered... How would the digital data on a DVD be formatted so that it could be output at 480 lines or 576 lines, with minimal "adjustment"?

I suppose I'll have to pull out my copy of "Video Demystified", if I can find it.

I can set the output to 480, 720, or 1080i, what more do you need? Got a little button on top and off it goes setting the output of either the component or HDMI to the selected setting.

Once again, this is all a function of the player's processing of the data and not anything inherent TO the data.

Digital processing....... How does a player up convert to 1080i? Digital processing......

I doubt that's going to help you with DVD info.

Notice you've been strangely quiet about this fundamental mistake while shrieking at others...