The SO wanted Wire In The Blood on DVD, and ordered the set. So I bought a Sony DVP-SR370 PAL-capable player so she could watch them.
After watching some of the DVDs, she inserted the next one and it would not load. There was a message saying that playback was prohibited in this region.
Why would some of the DVDs play, and not the others? The player is supposed to support PAL DVDs, and has until now.
There’s a difference between a DVD player that can play PAL discs (versus the NTSC standard used in America) and one that can play non-Region 1 titles. I suspect that your DVD player was locked to Region 1. I think you can change the region a limited number of times (five times?) until further changes are prohibited.
I’d recommend getting a region-free DVD player or buying one that you can set to region-free. The DVDHelp.com site will help you to find such players. (I’ve had good luck with Philips players, including ones available for under $50 at a store like Target.)
It’s described as ‘All Multi Region Zone Code DVD Player’.
Sorry, the site I meant is videohelp.com and this thread on that player says there is no code to make it region-free. Someone in that thread said that the player is region-free when imported, but then the distributor sets the region code as appropriate.
So why would it play some PAL discs in the boxed set, and not others?
This is a known issue with this model. It’s not a PAL⇔NTSC conversion problem, but rather a buggy region-reading software issue. At this time, there is no known fix. I would return the machine if I were you.