Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions DVD formats in different countries

I just spent a month in England visiting a freind. I took some DVD's with me, but they wouldn't play. The TV screen would just display "wrong regon". What's up with that?

I believe europe uses a PAL system where we use NTSC here in the US.

Most multi-system player can play both. I was dissapointed when I moved back from Germany to find I needed another player as well.

Actually, there are two issues involved.

One, as mentioned above, is that much of the rest of the world uses different television standards than the U.S., "PAL" being the most frequent. Some DVD players will play a PAL disc and output the American standard (NTSC) to your NTSC television.

The second issue, however, is that DVDs are encoded to only play within certain regions of the world. Think of this encoding as a "key" that certain players can unlock. If you're in Region 1, theoretically, you have a "Region 1" deck that will only play Region 1... not Regions two or three for example. This was done as an anti-piracy maneuver on the part of the production studios.

The reason I say "theoretically", is that there are region-free players that will play discs from anywhere in the world.

What I can't answer is whether or not there are players that are region-free and will play back PAL video files as well.

Well I live in South Africa, which is region 2. Every single DVD I own is Region 1. All you have to do here is tell the store your buying the player from to make it Region free (if it isnt already). You also need a Tv thats PAL/NTSC compatible.

I don't think region coding is affects piracy, its just a nuisance if you don't have a region free deck/dvd-rom.

I have also heard that some of the later Babylon 5 NTSC releases are region free.

What I can't answer is whether or not there are players that are region-free and will play back PAL video files as well.

Most can - I have two region-free players: a Malata (nice and affordable) DVD player, and I flashed my Denon 3910 with a region-free firmware. With both machines, you just tell the player what kind of tv you have - PAL or NTSC - and it will output on that basis.

This is all very interesting..... I would have never guessed (obviousely).

One more question....what's PAL?

http://worldvideo.ca/video-standards.html

enjoy

>>One more question....what's PAL?

PAL is German for NTSC

Seriously, there are three main TV encoding standards -- NTSC (US), PAL (German/British) and SECAM (French). As an example of the differences, NTSC is 525 lines/60 Hz while the others are 625 lines/50 Hz, and the colour subcarrier encoding is different from one standard to the next.

The rest of the world uses one or more of those standards depending on which adjoining country they get their free TV signals from