DVD play same on PAL and NTSC?

[wahiba]

A UK Computer video magazine has tested the Philips DVD R+RW+recorder in this months issue. They decided to test the recorded DVD on other players to see what happened.

Well the results were interesting. The DVD played on a Yelo800 but not on an old Samsung, as expected. However, a note in the Philips instructions suggested placing the DVD in the recorder tray and as inserting it press 2 on the remote. They did, and then it worked on the Samsung.

Consequnetly they are going to test DVDs on as many players as possible.

US CDs do not normaly play on most players sold in Europe. Most however can be adapted to play. In some cases by pressing the right numbers on the remote, in others with a tweaked chip that specialist carry out for a fee.

http://www.vcdhelp.com is the site to go to to check out individuals experiences from around the world. The British input is obvious from all the players bought at Tescos!

For 8mm DIY transfer the ability of a DVD player to play a CD, as a VCD of SVCD is as interesting as most films are not going to be the cinema norm of 117 minutes.

[paul]

Region zero are region free and will play anywhere (for example commercial pornos and some of the laurel and hardy commercial dvd transfers).

recently "Open City" of Rosselini became available in region zero encoding which I think is very good. Now the technical dividing of the videomarket by different sytems like secam, ntsc etc belongs to the past there will be huge oppertunities to release titles which were difficult to release before, because the market was too risky (small) for that.

[studiocarter]

What format is the video in region 0? Is it 29.97 fps, 23.976, or 25 fps?
Is the field size 640 x 480, 352 x 240, 352 x 288 or what?
How about 720 x 480 or 720 x 576? Or low resolution? Half those.

How can you expect a television to play a format it is not made for? Will the DVD player convert the file to the correct format? Which format will then look best on which televisions?

The only sure way to watch these things is on a PC. They'll play anything.
My next viewing device will be a 36" flat screen for the computer which'll have a DVD player inside. Televisions are acient history.

[paul]

as I mentioned before, as an European living in Europe, I bought many region 1 DVD's from amazon.com, meant fo the american market and they play great on my (deliberately chosen) region free dvd player and my PAL TV. No problems at all; great image! (Last DVD I bought is Dreyers Joan of Arc. Can you believe it?; and finaly I could watch the long censured Straw Dogs of Peckinpah). The technical details from DVD are a black box to me. I only found out that american dvds play on my simple consumer PAL Philips TV set. DVD technique itself is really without borders/regions.

[S8 Booster]

Checked the recording settings on the MAC Superdrive/iDVD and found 2 important factors that influence on the playback compability:

1) Use DVD-R format "CD"s (85% compability)
2) Set the playback "format" to either PAL or NTSC depending on the format used with your customers.

Should work pretty good if the DVD basic setup (menus etc) is correct (not "format" dependant)

Quite sure that PC DVD players will play any DVD-R format.

Stored data is identical on NTSC and PAL.
DVD will be printed for playback on either NTSC or PAL format which is a playback matrix only (instructing the DVD player), not Data matrix.

R

[mattias]

the region has nothing to do with this.

/matt

[Jonathan]

I think most DVD players sold in PAL countries can convert
NTSC to PAL, BUT to "PAL60", which will reproduce the
colours according to PAL standard, but with a repetition rate
of 60 Hz. Then it depends on the TV set if it can synchronize
to 60 Hz (PAL is 50 Hz normally)


best regards,

Jonathan.

[paul]

My televison is around 4 years old. It is really an average model. It's not a special set or so, and it plays US market DVD's. So If it is so that the frequencies have to be converted from 60NTSC to 60 HZPAL I think that most Pal TV's (like mine) at least from 5 years old on, will convert american market DVD's from 60NTSC to 60HzPAL . This is a reliable indication then, I thought.

[wahiba]

DVDs contain digital data. This is converted by the player for the required output.

It is the output of the player that matters, not the DVD. So any DVD will play on any all regions player. However a DVD player sold in the US might not play correctly through a TV in Europe.

However, most devices these day seem to have auto voltage sensing, and auto system sensing so I reckon the problem is probably not as great as many perceive. However it is always well to check. Especially for large single markets machines often have some facilities disconnected. Buy one in a scattered market area, like the middle east, and it will probably work anywhere. The video I bought in Oman actually receives UK PAL, will recieve all the others PALs. I have not tested it, I do not intend to take it on a world tour, but I reckon it will also recieve SECAM and NTSC. It is only a basic Panasonic.

I slipped up with the TV. It will not receive UK PAL, but probably just about everything else. So if you want a real universal machine try a long weekend in Dubai or Muscat. Do not know about the former, but you can certainly get a beer in the latter.

[mattias]

I think most DVD players sold in PAL countries can convert
NTSC to PAL, BUT to "PAL60", which will reproduce the
colours according to PAL standard, but with a repetition rate
of 60 Hz.

that's what i think too, but there's no ntsc to pal color conversion taking place. ntsc and pal dvd's use the exact same color encoding scheme.

/matt

[mattias]

My televison is around 4 years old. It is really an average model. It's not a special set or so, and it plays US market DVD's.

well, most pal tv sets from as far back as the 1960's also handle 60 hz just fine. some don't stretch the 486 lines to fill the screen, but you usually get a stable image. you guys didn't have commodores or ataris back in the days? didn't you ever run them in 60 hz? even if if you were actually lamers who didn't know the right traps, many games, especially the cracked ones, had a switch to change the frequency. ;-)

i would *never* buy a dvd player that tried to convert 60 fps to 50, and especially not any footage with 3:2 pulldown. do you have *any* idea how awful that would look?

/matt

[mattias]

by the way, in case you're curious: the 50 hz of pal television is *not* derived from the line frequency, even though that may have been the historical reason, but rather from the video signal itself. feed a tv set a signal with a 47.3 hz vsync and you will get 47.3 fps and so on. i don't know what the limits to this are, but anything from 40 to 70 or so should work just fine on reasonably modern equipment...

/matt

[S8 Booster]

Just some info from: http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=118

DVD-R and DVD-RW

DVD-R and DVD-RW are also both sanctioned formats of the DVD Forum. Both formats generally use 4.7 GB discs, although some DVD-R drives use 3.95 GB discs.

DVD-R is a write-once recordable format which allows excellent compatibility with both standalone DVD players and DVD-ROM drives. There are two main types of DVD-R discs: DVD-R for General Use and DVD-R for Authoring. Most consumer DVD-R burners use the cheaper General Use discs, while many higher end professional burners use Authoring discs. The correct media type appropriate for the recorder must be used when burning a DVD-R. However, once written, the discs should be able to be read in either drive type. (General Use DVD-R is designed to prevent backup of encrypted commercial DVDs.)

DVD-RW media uses rewriteable discs which are rated for more than 1000 rewrites in ideal situations. The majority of standalone DVD players will play video recorded on DVD-RW discs, but the compatibility is not as high as with DVD-R.

Current DVD-RW recorders also record to DVD-R. However, the reverse is not always true. Some DVD-R recorders are not capable of writing to DVD-RW discs (although some may be able to read DVD-RW discs burned with other drives).

DVD-RW and DVD-R have heavy penetration into the multimedia market as well as the general consumer market. For instance, the Apple SuperDrive, found in higher end Mac computers used in multimedia creation, is simply a DVD-R/DVD-RW (and CD-R/CD-RW) capable burner.

R

[S8 Booster]

Finally checked my iMac iDVD manual.

It says that iDVD burns DVD-R disks that are reqion free and can be used with any region code (whatever code) player.

From iDVD help meny.

R