Moving to Region 1

[dpollock]

I live in England and have a lot of family material in DVD-R format. This consists of old super-8 cine films and camcorder tapes, burned to DVD with a standalone Sony DVD Recorder (chipped multiregion)
in England. I assume that my created disks are therefore regionless, and in PAL format.

I am moving to Canada soon but I am told that DVD Players and TV's there support ONLY NTSC, whereas my Sony Recorder and TV here can play both PAL and NTSC.

I know nothing about using a DVD Recorder in the PC, but am familiar with using a CD rewriter and Nero for archiving my hard drive to CD.

I have a Win2000, PIII 450 computer with 30Gb disk free and 512MB memory. Can anybody suggest what software and DVD rewriter I need to get my PAL disks onto the hard drive and remaster them back to DVD-R as NTSC?

I do not need to edit them at all, just make a new copy to play out in Canada. I am told that if I put a DVD rewriter in my PC, it will lock itself to a region after using 5 times. Is there a way round this?

[DVO]

I would not convert the DVD, I would eiter:
1. Bring my TV and DVD (and maybe get a AC adapter for the current)
2. Buy a TV and DVD that can play PAL in Canada.

[FulciLives]

For best quality you will need to buy a true multi-system TV that can do both native NTSC and native PAL

The other option is to buy a new NTSC only TV but then buy a DVD player that can play PAL and convert it to NTSC

Quality is usually pretty good but not as good as watching native PAL on a display that can display PAL without conversion.

You will find that true multi-system televisions are rather expensive in Canada/USA and must be mostly mail-ordered with very high shipping charges so it might be cheaper to ship your current TV to Canada.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[tompika]

You can buy cheap multisystem (PAL playback on NTSC TV, NTSC playback on PAL TV) DVD players in Canada and US.

[instigator_008]

I agree. Buy the DVD player that'll do PAL. I live in Toronto, Canada and bought a Koss player the other day that does PAL/NTSC. It also plays everything I've thrown at it e.g. DVDr (+-), VCD and SVCD etc. Great player.

I'm an ex-pat in Canada. Where are you moving to?

[dpollock]

This is great news. I was informed by Sony Canada that that multisystem DVD players/recorders. I will buy a new TV and DVD rewriter when I get there were not available. I am moving to Montreal, near relatives

I can get my relatives in Montreal to check out PAL/NTSC rewriters in advance - I only know Future Shop, unless you have any other suggestions where we can make enquiries.

[instigator_008]

Well, rewriters will burn anything you tell them to including PAL and NTSC.

In order to change a movie from PAL to NTSC you have to re-encode, using programs such as CCE or TMPGenc. This site has plenty of tutorials on how to do this.

The re-encoding process is a long one though!

[kupton]

I'm confused. I live in NTSC land. I bought a DVD from Europe and played it on my cheapo region free APEX 1500 dvd player. Besides the PAL/NTSC resolution difference and framerate isn't MPEG2 well... MPEG2? Since dpollock's discs were created region free, a NTSC dvd player should be all that's needed. What am I missing?

[instigator_008]

PAL is higher quality line NTSC. PAL is the European standard, NTSC the north American.

MPEG2 is MEPEG2, that is correct. But in order for it to be displayed properly your equipment must be able to handle it. There is tons of info on this site if you look around.

[kupton]

I'm aware of the technical differences in formats. I'm just pointing out that he doesn't need to purchase a lot of costly hardware when a standard NTSC dvd player will play his discs fine, although a bit cropped.

[instigator_008]

I'm aware of the technical differences in formats. I'm just pointing out that he doesn't need to purchase a lot of costly hardware when a standard NTSC dvd player will play his discs fine, although a bit cropped.

Yes, absolutely right.

[DivXExpert]

Not all DVD NTSC players handle PAL very well. Most don't. When you put one in you will get a flickering black and white rolling screen. But there are some DVD player that do an internal conversion, but that internal conversion is not at high quality as watching it in its native format. NTSC TVs can not display 50hz no matter how hard you try. The DVD player will have no problem sending out a PAL signel, but the TV cant display it. NTSC TVs are 60hz, and will not display 50hz unless they are designed to do so.

[tompika]

he doesn't need to purchase a lot of costly hardware when a standard NTSC dvd player will play his discs fine

If you call a mulisystem player "standard NTSC player"... then yes.

https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers.php?DVDname=&Submit=Search&Search=Search&multisyste...=&best=&worst=
725 DVD Players supports MULTISYSTEM 79%
191 DVD Players do not support MULTISYSTEM 21%
916 DVD Players tested (2666 DVD Players are not tested).

[kupton]

Not all DVD NTSC players handle PAL very well. Most don't. When you put one in you will get a flickering black and white rolling screen. But there are some DVD player that do an internal conversion, but that internal conversion is not at high quality as watching it in its native format. NTSC TVs can not display 50hz no matter how hard you try. The DVD player will have no problem sending out a PAL signel, but the TV cant display it. NTSC TVs are 60hz, and will not display 50hz unless they are designed to do so.

Oh, ok. I guess I just got lucky then. Since my cheap Apex played my PAL disc fine I figured any multi-region player could.