Pal/ntsc Dvds

[Kevin Lee]

Howdy,

Can you friendly folks in the big US of A (and other NTSC countries) play multi-region PAL DVDs like we in PAL land can play NTSC DVDs?

[Rob Lohman]

The answer is no Kevin. The DVD player will probably accept the
disc as long as it is region 1 or multi region, but the player and
the american TV's would not know what to do with a PAL signal.

p.s. here in Europe it largely depends on your TV whether we
can play NTSC (sometimes DVD player as well) as you probably
already know... just to make sure. Not EVERY TV (seen a lot
myself) can playback NTSC.

[Kevin Lee]

Darn. Here in Asia we are practically format blind. Can play, see and hear anything and everything.

Need to figure out how i can do the best possible transfer from PAL to NTSC. My original footage is in PAL so i have you folks in Europe covered. It's our friends in States that i have to sort out. How would you go about this?

[Boyd Ostroff]

First, if you're talking about DVD's you make yourself I don't think that region codes are an issue unless you're using some software to intentionally set a region. It's my understanding that the region codes are only used on commercial DVD's for marketing purposes to intentionally make them incompatible with certain players. If you burn a DVD in your computer I don't believe it will have a region code. Maybe someone will more technical knowledge can clear this up?

I've asked the converse of your question before when I needed to send a DVD to europe. The response was overwhelming that most of the DVD players in Europe could handle both PAL and NTSC dvd's and show NTSC video on PAL TV sets. But Rob is probably right that a PAL DVD won't play here in the US.

[Kevin Lee]

I'm using DVD Studio Pro for authoring and it has a region code setting. Not that i'd be using it though.

Thanks Boyd.

[Rob Moreno]

Shoot me if I'm wrong, but I think that you need to use DVD-R for Authoring discs and special Authoring drives, not DVD-R for General which is the type that most computers with built-in DVD burners use , in order store region coding (as well as copy protection) on a disc.

[Rob Lohman]

You are incorrect Rob M. Region coding is just a switch that is
set in the .IFO files on your disc. Nothing more. If your authoring
program supports it you can use it. Heck test is out on a DVD-+RW
and see what happens!

The *only* thing you will need authoring discs for is for CSS
encryption. Which you can't do anyway with a simple authoring
application because you will need to get an encryption key and
pay fees for that etc. etc.

In theory you can even enable the Macrovision support flag which
is just another bit in if I remember correctly the VOB files themselves.
Not sure which programs would support that since you will also
need to pay a fee for that I believe.

[Rob Moreno]

Actually, I did try making a region-1 DVD-RW in DVD Studio Pro, and it played fine in my region-2 only DVD player.

[Rob Lohman]

Are you sure it is not region-free (that player). A lot of players
that are being sold in region 2, especially the cheaper or less
known brands are region-free or auto-region players! I have
one standing a couple of feet from me right now. Legally bought
in a store.

[Rob Moreno]

This was the DVD drive in my Mac, which is region-2. Whenever I put a commercial non-region-2 DVD into the drive, I get a warning message asking me if I want to change the region code of my drive and that I only have 5 changes remaining before the drive is region-locked. This dialog did not appear when I inserted the region-1 DVD-RW that I made and it played fine. I'm sure I encoded properly as a region-1 disc. Has anyone else tried a similar test?