PAL and NTSC on DVDs

[Jonathan Clark]

trev wrote:
>> anyway, the PAL thing only applies to videos, not dvd's doesn't it?

No, it applies to DVDs as well.

This is a subject with a lot of piece-parts, and I'm sure I do not understand
it fully, but here's a summary. Corrections and/or pointers to a better article
welcome.

There are three main TV broadcast systems in use in the world (plus variants on
each): PAL (mainly Europe and the ex-Empire countries, but not France and its
ex-Empire, plus China, Brazil, and Argentina); SECAM (France, its ex-Empire and
Russia), and NTSC (North, Central and South America except for Brazil and Argentina,
and Japan). NTSC was the first system and is the simplest, SECAM came later and is
more complex, and PAL came last and seems to give the best results.

The video on a DVD (or a videotape) will always be always be encoded with one of
these formats.

Nearly all TVs will only "do" one format. The capabilities of DVD players seem to
vary greatly around the world.

Multi-system TVs do exist, as do multi-system DVD players. These work together because
this sort of DVD player just outputs whatever format the DVD is in, without conversion.

A PAL/NTSC converting DVD player will read both PAL and NTSC disks and output either
PAL or NTSC, converting as necessary. It turns out that up-converting NTSC to PAL is
so easy that most DVD players in the UK include this feature. Going the other way is
harder (I don't know why) or perhaps just rarer. But Wait There's More - keep reading!

Carl Edlund Anderson replied:
> My limited understanding is that most DVD players convert on the fly  
> between NTSC and PAL, so that's not an issue usually.

That seems to be true in the UK, but is certainly not true here in the US.
Basically all DVD players sold here are NTSC-only. Converting DVD players
do exist, and are quite legal, but they are hard(er) to find. You will not
find one in your local Wal-Mart, for example.

> between NTSC and PAL, so that's not an issue usually.  However, a  
> Yooessan will need to check that their DVD player is multi-regional  
> in order to play discs from the Yookay (and vice versa); the US is  
> Region 1, and the UK is in Region 2.  (Here in Colombia, I'm in  
> Region 4.)

You are quite right, and that is the other thing to watch out for. DVDs also
come with a 'Region code' number (0-6) on them, which is just a way of restricting
where they can be played. DVD players also contain this number. When you put a
DVD into a player it compares its number with that on the DVD, if they don't
match then the player will refuse to play the disk. However, if either number
is zero (0) then the test always passes (hence the occasional reference to a
Region-0 disk). See http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.10

Some players come with their region code set to zero, and others can be 'hacked'
to set this. See e.g. http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks

So if I (living in the US) go to the UK and buy a DVD, I have two hurdles to jump
to get it to play here: first, the PAL/NTSC conversion, second, the region code.
The simplest solution is to purchase a converting region-free DVD player. There
are other solutions - some video authoring packages have this capability so
you can read the disk in on a PC, convert it to the other format, then burn it
to a DVD. You still have to strip the region code off, though (there are other
programs which will do this).

The whole issue of playing DVDs on PCs is even more insane - any format can be
played, but the PC may or may not respect the region code. However, at least for
Windows, there is a secret counter in almost all drives which gets incremented
every time you switch formats. Once this hits five (5), the drive is locked in
that format, and refuses to play any other. So if you only play NTSC or PAL DVDs
this won't affect you, but if you play one, then the other, then the first, then
pretty soon your DVD drive will stop playing one or the other disk. It may be
possible to reset or disable this counter, see e.g. http://tdb.rpc1.org/

I believe that Apple computers work the same way, but I'm not sure. I have no
clue about the various flavours of Linux.

There is no PAL/SECAM/NTSC stuff with Blu-Ray disks, but there are region codes still.
So far most disks seem to be region-free. Also note that the regions are different
from DVD region codes (there are only three of them, for example).

I must say I'm grateful to Hawkwind (among others) for putting their DVDs out as
NTSC Region 0, it means that I can "just play them" here, as can those in the UK.

Jonathan