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Posted by Mark Burns on 01/01/08 01:35
On Dec 22, 12:58 am, "Jarrod Smith" <jennjar...@verizon.net> wrote:
> I am contemplating installing the upgrade on my Pioneer recorder to make it
> region free, but I am unsure of one thing. Does region free mean that I
> would be able to play PAL format on my recorder? If anyone knows, I would
> greatly appreciate your assistance. Thanks in advance.
>
> Jarrod
No. Region Free means that it will play a disk regardless of the
region code on the disk. More information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code
There are hacks to make a dvd player region free, but none to make it
play PAL, AFAIK. The PAL format uses a different frame rate per
second and different video resolutions.
Some dvd players will play both PAL and NTSC, but they will be
advertised to do so. One of our old tricks is to decrypt the DVD and
in the process remove the region encoding, then use IFO Edit to
indicate the new disk to be NTSC. Some players (about 50%),
especially the cheaper ones, would properly play the reformatted an
NTSC television. These players were made for both PAL/NTSC markets
and their firmwares would only check the IFO header. If the firmware
also checks inside the VOB wrappers then this won't work. Pioneer is
one that I recall wouldn't work, but am sure that it was a different
model than yours.
Today, most of us who play both PAL and NTSC dvds rely on PAL/NTSC
players which do a much better job. My favorite, I own three
(971/970/980) with two in service and one waiting for another flat
panel crt replacement, is the OPPO available from www.oppodigital.com
These are easily made region free with the 9210 menu code (with no
disk in the machine) and selecting region 0. They are also among the
very best upconverters for high-definition televisions.
I am currently sitting out the high def HD/BD war, but am about ready
to purchase the HD format as they are available for under $200, have a
finished spec, load faster than BD, and are all region free for HD
disks (but not region encoded SD disks). However, they will have the
OPPO sitting on top as the OPPO will play PAL/NTSC SD disks and ignore
their region encoding.
Cheers...
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