Expert help needed re: International playability of DVD+R DVD burned in US

[That Bastid]

I have a DVD question for any experts in the house.

The backstory, in case the info is needed to answer the question: I have several video clips that I've downloaded from the net that I've been sending to a few people in the US. The clips, all of which were derived from video rather than film sources, were in various & sundry computer file formats. I'm not really sure which ones, but some had .wmv suffixes while others were .avi, and may or may not have been divx, etc. (As you can tell already, I'm a complete neophyte.)

I wanted to be able to convert and burn these disparate clips onto a regular DVD disk that people could play on the set-top DVD players attached to their TVs. After trying several different programs, all of which choked on one or more clips, I finally tried ZJMedia's WinAVI Video Converter which managed to convert the clips. I then took the resulting files and burned them as "DVD Video" disks to DVD+R blanks in Nero 6.6. (Just before burning, Nero advises "Book type automatically set to DVD-ROM," if that matters.) I've then sent these disks to several people here in the US and so far it's worked fine; they've been able to play them with no complaints.

Finally, we arrive at the actual question:

Will these DVDs only work on US players attached to US TVs? It would be useful if I could also send these DVDs to people in the UK, or Germany, etc, feeling confident that they would play. Will they? I don't know anything about region coding, frame rates, NTSC/PAL etc, or if there are other reasons why it won't work, or might at least be dicey.

I'd be grateful for any feedback.

[bobban]

I can't gice you a conclusive answer but I can make an observation from my own experience...

Technically the answer is no because of the PAL(Europe,Australia)-NTSC(USA, Canada, Japan) divide...here is full list.
http://www.spcomms.com/standards.html

But it is not black and white.... I live in Australia and used to make all my DVDs as PAL thinking if I didnt I couldn't watch them...but then I read somewhere that most modern PAL tv sets are capable of playing NTSC too..I was having trouble at the time with convetring seom clips to PAL so decided to try NTSC.....always playable for me....have never made a PAL since....

So I am only guessing but if you are making NTSC...it could well work for your european friends...So my suggestion is that region free, ntsc dvds should be playable in all regions with 'modern' tv sets...

Not sure if the reverse is true or not for playing PAL in NTSC countries...anyways good luck

[ZippyP.]

Not sure if the reverse is true or not for playing PAL in NTSC countries...

Not. Most players in North America will not play PAL.

[lordsmurf]

Probably at least half of all NTSC players are fine with PAL these days. Region is another story.

[InXess]

UK, germany are PAL coutries so make PAL DVD's. To be safe and not rely on luck (some friends may have PAL/NTSC (Europe) or NTSC/PAL (US) capable players) you need to make DVD's in both systems. ConvertXtoDVD will help you do that.