DVD compatibility question

[IcyPeas]

Will DVDs from the U.S. work in a DVD player in the U.K.? I ask because VHS tapes were not compatible.

thanks,

p.s. also posted this question in the computer forum, but this forum moves faster.

[glen123098]

1. Probably not.

DVDs have regional codes and UK has a different region code than the USA. Its friggin ridiculous and should be illegal, but thats the way it is. I believe you can buy region free DVD players. Most computers and laptops I think are region free.

[Orrex]

4. Not to mention the language barrier.

[IcyPeas]

6. good one Orrex

:rofl:

[sakabatou]

2. Probably not

There are different region codes.

[Duer 157099]

3. Caveat

Although most DVD players are pre-programmed to only play certain region coded DVDs, on many models, there is a way to reprogram it to read other regions or to go entirely region-free. It varies by model, but if you know the model of the DVD player and you google it along with other keywords like "region code" or "region free" and "firmware" etc, you might find the info you need.

I've done this with one of my DVD players, although I've never actually had to use this feature, I just wanted to see if it was doable, which it was.

[qnr]

8. Watch out though, some of them have a limit, so if you've changed it four

times and decide you want to change it again for region 6, you might have to be prepared to watch nothing but Chinese DVDs on that player in the future. Unfortunately, the limit includes going back to the original area, so going to 2 for the UK is one, going back to 1 is two.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

5. For a PC-based solution, Google "DVD Region+CSS Free"

I have this software on my PC and can watch any DVD, from any region.

I've seen instructions for reprogramming DVDs to different regions, but with some, you can't keep going back and forth...change it once, and you've changed it permanently. That may not be true for all players...just the ones I've researched.

[david13]

7. Depends. Some have regional coding, some do not. Some use

a different Euro format, some do not.
Maybe.
dc

[jmowreader]

9. You need this...

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?client=safari&rls=en&q=region+free+dvd+player&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=13821867835249553411&ei=rujyTLP2DYnSsAPzkfm3Cw&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CD0Q8wIwAQ#ps-sellers

Or, at least, one like it.

This DVD player does two things the normal DVD players you buy in stores do NOT do--it doesn't recognize the "region coding" on the discs that keep you from playing European DVDs in the US (as mentioned in other posts in this thread, DVDs have "region coding"--1 for the US, 2 for Europe, 3 for Asia--that keep them from selling the same disc all over the world), and it does video format conversion from PAL or SECAM DVD to NTSC at the output jack, which also keeps you from watching European DVDs in the US. (This is the issue that kept you from watching European VHS if you didn't have a multisystem TV, which you probably didn't have unless you were stationed in Europe).

Now for my next rant, and this is technical: Why, in HELL, didn't the Telecommunication Standardization Sector come up with ONE worldwide format for high-definition TV? In the Old Days you had three TV standard groups--NTSC, PAL and SECAM. (There are several flavors of PAL and SECAM.) The main reason they did this is the power line frequency: NTSC relies on a 60Hz power line, the other two on a 50Hz line. (The frame rate is half the power line frequency--in 60Hz countries the B&W frame rate is 30FPS and the color rate is 29.97FPS; in 50Hz countries the frame rate is always 25FPS. When TVs first came out they were all tubes, so being able to steal the vertical sync rate off the power line means you can save the parts needed to build one oscillator, which reduces heat in the cabinet and the size of the power supply. The reason there are two 50H standards is SECAM sucks ass at the production and transmission level--because of the way it works, everyone who handles SECAM programs works with them in PAL and feeds them through a PAL-SECAM converter.) Now! These days, with application-specific ICs being the norm in televisions, you can put all the oscillators you want in a television. There is ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to worry about the powerline freq when building a television--with 120FPS televisions out there it's obvious they can't linesync the vertical rate anyway--so why is there more than one HDTV standard? This would have made the televisions less expensive since they would all have been made the same for everyone in the world. It would have made broadcast equipment more expensive because all the stuff that has to worry about format would have been made the same for everyone in the world. (Obviously power amplifiers and antennas don't give a fuck what you feed through them so long as it's the right frequency, but cameras, modulators and so on are format-dependent.)