I don’t quite understand how dvd players work, so here’s a question for the experts out there. My boyfriend wants to bring his dvd player from England to America. It will play both region one and region two dvds on his television there (which is PAL format). Will it be able to play dvds on an american tv (NTSC format). I know that it can read both formats, but I’m not sure if it can output in both formats. Any information would be appreciated. The dvd player model is Samsung DVD 511 / XEG.
DVD players are, as far as I can determine, pretty much the same everywhere, and are independent of screen resolution. They auto-detect which format the disc is intended to be, and send that signal to the TV - i.e. the NTSC signal will need to expand to get the correct ratio on a PAL TV.
TVs are the crucial element - NTSC TVs cannot play PAL, however some PAL TVs can play NTSC.
I am pretty sure I’m right.
The tv that he had it connected to in England was a pretty inexpensive one. He did have a tv in the house that I know was both PAL and NTSC compliant, but I honestly doubt the one this dvd player was connected to was. My tv is the standard $250 tv, a phillips bought in 2002. Since his dvd player reads both formats, will it run the region one dvds on my tv, but not the region two? Or will it run both because it can read both formats? Or neither? I’m so confused.
You’re getting region-coding mixed up with video standards.
Region Coding is something hardcoded in theDVD so that it will only play in a player with that region set. If his DVD player could play Region 1 (US) and Region 2(UK) discs in the UK, it can play them anywhere. That doesn’t change, it’s hardcoded into his player.
But the TV it uses has to be PAL compatible to play PAL movies. So if you’ll be using your own TV, which I imagine is NTSC only, it cannot play PAL movies. PAL uses more lines in its image than NTSC does. Therefore your NTSC TV cannot handle a PAL image.
Thanks so much. And yes, I was very confused. The end result of this is that there isn’t any reason for him to ship his dvd player here. We should just buy another one in the US.
Any suggestions on dvd players that will play both region 1 and region 2 dvds in the US? Or am I still mixing things up?
I believe that what you’re looking for, in particular, are region-free DVD players that output in NTSC (or both NTSC and PAL, but not only PAL). neutron star posted a link to a FAQ in another DVD thread (talking about music on DVD). This FAQ, among other things, has a list of sites that sell DVD-related merchandise. Here are two of the ones that sell region-free players:
http://regionfreedvdplayers.com/
http://www.codefreedvd.com/
I don’t have any experience with either store; They were just listed on the FAQ page.
The FAQ also points to a page that lists workarounds for various DVD-players to enable region-free playback:
http://www.regionfreedvd.net/players.html
For some players, you can actually make them play any region DVD just by entering a series of keypresses. If you can’t find one that comes advertised as region-free, perhaps one of these machines would be useful.
And oh yeah… if you need more information, it might be better to post this in General Questions instead of MPSIMS? (Or get a moderator to help you move it)
How would you plug that english dvd player in an american 120v outlet?
Anyway, yes you can get region free players from local stores like Circuit city (Saw one in there once). Your computer can play any region dvds & your ps2-- if you have one-- too. Some need software to play other regions.
For reference, my Canadian Region-1 NTSC DVD-player will play PAL DVDs and convert them to NTSC.