Any North American DVD players that will play Australian discs?

Factual Questions
1

I currently don’t own a DVD player… but I’m thinking about getting one…

There is an old TV show that has been released on DVD only in Australia… if there a DVD player I can buy here in Canada that will play DVDs from that region, or will I have to watch it on my PC?

Thanks…

2

DVD regions are brioken into i believe 5 key regions (NA, SA, Asia, Europe, Australia NZ)

What DVD’s your player will play is dependant on it’s region decoder, basically some DVD"s will have a region coding and unless you have the region decoder chip for that region you can’t play that dvd. There are many brand that have “universal” dvd players but they are more expensive.

3

DVD’s actually have 6 regions. BurnMeUp forgot about Japan, I think. Anyway, multiregion players are not very common. The Apex 600A used to, but the newer ones don’t.

Fortunately, it is quite possible to modify most players to have multi-region capability. You’ll generally have to ship the player off to a shop somewhere, where they will replace a chip.

Try http://www.dvdtalk.com form more information, specifically, search through their forums.

4

The last time I checked, about two years ago, there were lots of people selling modified DVD players that would play DVDs from all regions. However, IIRC, the DVD player I ended up buying (from a U.S. mail order company) can be set to play DVDs from any region but the hitch is that you can only reset the region 5 times then it stays on whatever region it is set to. So if you only want to watch the Australian DVD a few times, you could buy a Canadian player and switch it back and forth between Australian and North American coding until your 5 swtiches were up. Otherwise, if you want to switch regularly between Autralian and North American disks, I think you have to either buy a modified player or buy two DVD players. Considering how cheap DVD players have become, that may be the best solution.

5

Actually, there are two problems with playing an Australian disc in the North America:

  1. As everyone has pointed out, the regioal encoding will prevent you using an Aussie disc in a US player. As TheNerd stated, the Apex DVD player will play all DVD discs (and MP3 CDs!);

  2. The next problem is that Australia uses PAL encoding for TV signals. This is not compatible with the NTSC TV signal used in America. The Apex DVD player gets around this somehow, but the picture is very distorted (everything is kinda squished in from the sides).

If you are absolutely desperate to play Aussie DVDs, then you’re looking at either buying a PAL comaptible TV, or a PAL/NTSC convertor.
I don’t like giving out plugs, but type “multisystem TV” or “PAL convertor” into http://www.alltheweb.com and it should point you to some nice expensive sites.

ps What is this series you are desperate to watch?

6

It’s a kids show from Japan that was dubbed in English… it’s called Monkey! (sometimes Monkey Magic)

Great show that was very popular in the UK in the early 80s…
Thanks for the info…

7

If the Apex is the one I’m thinking of, it only costs about a hundred bucks. It plays mp3s, and you can go through a menu to defeat the region protection. I dont know how good a player it is, but for 100 bucks, you can’t really go too wrongly. On another note…damn this dvd region encoding! My guess is its only around due to the mass-producing “piracy factories” that exist in places like China (note that China is its own region, rather than an entire Asian region). Oh well.

8

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Colin Wilkinson *
**Actually, there are two problems with playing an Australian disc in the North America:

  1. The next problem is that Australia uses PAL encoding for TV signals. This is not compatible with the NTSC TV signal used in America. The Apex DVD player gets around this somehow, but the picture is very distorted (everything is kinda squished in from the sides).

[QUOTE]

Not true. The information on the DVD is neither NTSC nor PAL that is why you can play them back on acomputer monitor with a DVD drive in the computer. The display circuty of the DVD player outputs either PAL or NTSC

9

If you get a DVD player for the computer many of the older ones that are still out are not region locked or if you have one that is they have programs to reset the counter that limits you to changing the region 5 times. You might want to get on an efnet irc server and type /join #pcdvd and ask someone in the channel for a reccomediation

10

“Born from an egg on a mountaintop
Monkey is monkey that never stops
He knew every magic trick under the sun
He’s the man that everyone can have some fun”

Or something sort of like that.

The nature of Monkey was… irrepressible!

11

Also, another issue to consider is that there is a new region coding scheme called (someone correct me if I’m wrong) RCE or Region Coding Enhancement. Early DVD players circumvented region coded DVDs merely by setting the player code to region 0. But RCE encoded DVDs detecting a region 0 player will refuse to play. However, they will still be playable on those players that enable you to manually set the region, 1 for North America, 2 for Australia, etc.

Using a DVD rom drive for your computer is the best bet as far as I’m concerned. As stated above, you can play NTSC or PAL, set it to any region and even circumvent Macrovision copy protection ;). You’ll be able to find many such utilites at 7th Zone or other sites like it.

Also, beware the Apex. The model with the secret menu to set regions has long been off the market (unless you want to bankrupt yourself on eBay).

Cheers,
Hodge