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Posted by Edward on 10/09/06 19:51
On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 10:32:59 -0700, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
> On 10/07/2006, Edward posted this:
>> I had realitives come over France (I'm in the US) and something
>> unexpected happened: They have three home movie DVD-RWs they wanted to
>> play on my TV of their daughter's wedding. I don't speak French so I
>> couldn't very well convey the differences in NTSC and PAL. My father
>> tried, but he doesn't really understand it either, so it was hard for homt
>> o tell him in French without knowing the words to certain things.
>> Anyway, I managed to make copies of the DVD no problem and make second
>> copies in NTSC format by importing the VOB files into Nero and buring them
>> to DVD. It worked out pretty well - obviously some quality loss but not
>> much.
>> SO here I am.
>> I was thinking abotu getting a region free DVD player so when they happens
>> again in a year I'll be ready.
>> Are there any disadvantages to getting a region free DVD player? WIll
>> certain DVDs simply not play?
>
> First you need to know that Regions and NTSC vs PAL are two unrelated
> things.
>
> Commercial DVDs are marked with a code specifying that they "belong" to
> a specific geographic region of the planet. For instance, the US is in
> region 1 and France is in region 2. A player is supposed to note the
> region code on a DVD and not play it if the DVD's region is not the
> same as the payer's region. Region-free players disobey this command.
>
> On the other hand, there are three different schemes (with variations
> on top of that) for actually encoding the video, including differences
> in frame rate, number of lines per frame of video, and the way color
> is represented. A player could very well accept a DVD as being in the
> right region, but be unable to play it because it is not equipped to
> decode its videor representation.
>
> Here are two analogies, not worth much :-) Let's say x goes to book
> store to buy a pornographic book, but she is only 17 years old. The
> bookseller says "Sorry". That's like region codes. So she borrows her
> older sister's drivers license and goes back to the store (she waits
> until the first clerk is off duty, of course). She buys the book, gets
> it home, and discovers that it's in Urdu and she can't read it. That's
> like NTSC vs PAL.
Yes, thanks; I do understand PAL and NTSC. The reason I was looking for a
region free DVD player is because they seem to be advertised as capable of
playing PAL DVDs in NTSC countries.
As far as I know there are no single region NTSC&PAL players out there.
Even if they did exist I don't want one; since I'll be spending money on
the thing, I might as well go for the gold and get a fully capable region
free dual standard unit.
Hopefully that makes sense that was typed very quickly.
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