PAL and NTSC on DVDs

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 09 Dec 2008, at 13:56 , Jonathan Clark wrote:
> 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.

Although I did find a cheapo multi-region DVD player in a local  
Carrefour hypermarket here in Colombia that will happily play my PAL  
DVDs from the UK. :)  (Colombia, in Region 4, is a NTSC shop, I  
believe).

However, my modus operandi is to drag a selection of DVDs from  
different places along to the shop and "try before you buy".  That's  
the easiest way to be sure! :)


> 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.

Yes, on OS X, if you use the system's DVD playing software, it asks  
for for your region the first time and thereafter only allows that  
region (or possibly you have 10 plays before the region is fixed, or  
something like that.). However, if you use a 3rd-party player like  
VLC, you get around that issue. It is possible to hack the firmware  
on some Apple-supplied DVD drives, but I've never bothered with that;  
a rarely play DVDs on my computer.

> 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.

I think even the film industry started to find region coding to be  
more hassle than it was worth.  Dumb idea, really! :)


> 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.

Yes, quite a lot of music DVDs started coming out as region-free/ 
Region 0 once the bands and/or their management basically realized  
that region-coding was a hindrance to sales and distribution.

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
http://www.carlaz.com/