Now that digital tv has arrived, and our ancient vcr has been retired, we've been looking into buying a dvd player - multi-region, because we want to be able to play both US and UK discs. I looked at Amazon where this item
is described as multi-region, but there is a note to the effect that it only plays region 2. I've seen the same thing for a number of other units.
I'm confused.
Can someone explain this to me? Is there a code to enter to allow the machine to play other regions?
There often is (but not always). When I buy things like that, I Google them first with the keyword 'hack' or similar to find out if it's possible to enable multi-region.
Related question; UK PAL is what, 625 lines @ 50fps, and US NTSC is 525 lines @ 60fps - so as well as being unlocked, does the DVD player also have to be capable of scaling and compensating for different frame sizes and rates on the fly?
Or is the number of lines and frame rate constant on the DVD regardless of region (i.e. there's a global standard), and so all the player ever has to worry about is converting between "DVD lines/fps" standard to whatever its native format is (e.g. PAL, NTSC) for the region where it was sold, regardless of what region the DVD being played is for?
(I bought a DVD player in the UK circa 1998 - that one required soldering a surface-mount IC along with a few bridge wires in order to defeat the region encoding; soon after that, entering a code via the remote became more common)
cheers
Jules
Frames/lines are not constant. Some DVD players do frame conversion, but IME it's crap. You need a TV which will do PAL 60 and a player that will output NTSC as PAL60, or a NTSC compatible TV. Most TVs now will handle PAL60 ok. Back in 1998, I had a TV that wouldn't, and the first R1 DVD I bought looked terrible- The frame rate conversion just dropped some frames.
If you can be arsed, a linux machine will (when equipped with the correct library) strip the region out of any DVD and give you an image to burn that is region free :-)
Or DVDShrink on Windoze.
The note is a generic one amazon plasters on all of them I expect. The reviews make it clear its a proper multiregion drive out of the box without needing hacks/codes etc.
On some players you need a code or weird button combination in a service menu to get into region 0. Note that region zero is not quite multiregion in the sense that while in that mode the player will play discs from any region, the menu on the disc may make an explicit check for its particular reason (sometimes called region coded enhanced (RCE) discs)
Not usually - most modern TVs will happily display either scan rate and format.
There are some that can also do slightly odd modes like PAL 60 - so pal colour encoding but typical NTSC frame rate.
No a region 1 disk will have a slightly lower vertical resolution.
Indeed same here... (although I bought mine pre-modded)
The ultimate tool on windows is AnyDVD... makes all the pain go away on normal and HD content. Makes any disc look like its region free, has away all the other dodgy stuff as well like enforced watching of trailers, copy protected audio CDs, and other "PC Only" autorun stuff. Also stops HD stuff being dowscaled to SD resolution when the HDCP copy protection chain is for whatever reason not in place.
I resisted it for some time on the grounds they wanted paying for it, but I confess to being a convert now ;-)
In article , John Rumm writes
Registered in St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda for a very good reason ;-)
Indeed. The roll out rate of patches to make sure that anti circumvention techniques don't work for long is quite impressive as well!
What you want is a player that does 50 hz progressive scan (50p) and 60p and a TV that does the same over hdmi.
50Hz interlaced (50i) and 60i will do if you cant manage progressive. You don't want or need anything to do with PAL or NTSC in the digital world.
It's been my experience that the less cash you pay for a DVD player, the more likely it is to be multi-region or at least hackable (eg my kids' £20 Aldi job versus my high-end Sony model)
David
That appeals to my penny-pinching preferences.
Indeed, and if its not even got the official DVD logo on it, its almost guaranteed ;-)
In message , S Viemeister writes
For region hack, see here:
You lot seem to have got in a bit of a tizzy.
The OP asked if the link was a region free player. it says it is and the reviewers say it is.
Amazon are only guaranteeing that it will play region 2.
As for the bigger question of can all region free players play all region DVDs, the answer is not so clear cut.
Region 2 is PAL and NTSC. ALL region 2 players MUST play NTSC. Japan is region 2 and NTSC, but as has been discussed, some players do real NTSC, some do pseudo PAL, some do converted to real PAL.
Region 1 is exclusively NTSC. There are some region 1 machines that can be made region free but cannot handle PAL, they cannot read it or if they can they cannot output it, as there is no PAL circuitry. And some will output PAL only as PAL and that is a way that a lot of American TVs can't display it. A lot of even expensive American TVs can only display real NTSC.
The latest region 2 machines do give a quite good conversion to PAL, BUT if total picture quality is required than you are better off getting a Blu-ray player. The output on HDMI is compatible with HDTV and the conversions are really top notch. You still need to get the DVD section and the Blu-ray section made region free ( they are independent ) but the pictures are fantastic.
Remember the Blu-ray regions don't correspond to the DVD regions. for example ; Blu-ray Australian disks play on a UK region machine but Australian region 4 DVDs won't.
Gary
Quite, they are only relevant to composite video as well. I'd expect a DVD to be connected via RGB ina SCART or component. I'd suspect some posters are incorrectly using "PAL" or "NTSC" to mean certain line and frame rates.
Yet you can have PAL 525 lines/60Hz as well as NTSC 625lines/50Hz!!
That's a useful tip.
(Just out of curiosity, I checked the multi-region player I got from SCAN about 10 or 12 years ago, & it does have the logo. It still works quite well, although the vibrations through the feet resonated in the cabinet it's in now --- until I put a square cut from an old inner tube under each one.)
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