About this Huw DVD

[Arin Komins]

On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, Paul Mather wrote:

:Subject: Re: About this Huw DVD
:
:I think the situation is the same in the USA, but I can't comment from
:personal experience as I don't own a DVD player.  But, of people I
:know who have them, their DVD players seem to support both PAL and
:NTSC (changeable via a menu option), and there are lots of firmware
:hacks available that can disable/set the region of the player (not an
:issue with the Huw DVD as it is mastered to be region-free).

Most dvd players you will buy at a consumer outlet will not be region
free.  (I was burned this way on my first DVD player.)

Many consumer players (noncomputer players...but retail settop
models) have undocumented hacks (Sampo, for instance) to allow
players to switch region.

However, unless your TV supports PAL playback (such tvs used to be called
"multisystem" tvs.)

It could be that modern tvs support pal/secam/ntsc playback, but it didn't
used to be.

:The point I was trying to make is that I think the stated PAL
:requirement is a red herring, as any half-decent DVD playback system
:ought to be able to do the resolution/frame rate conversion on the fly
:to play on any type of TV.  I would hate to think that someone would
:eschew buying the Huw DVD just because they thought, "but my TV is
:NTSC, not PAL, so it won't play..."
:
:I could well be wrong, though.

...but I don't think it's the dvd player that cares, but the TV.

but this is only as far as I know.

Arin
(back to lurking.)
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Arin Komins                                   akomins at uchicago.edu
Manager of Web Systems Architecture
University of Chicago/NSIT                      tel: (773)834-4087
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