American DVD P;aying on UK computer

[visionman]

Hi Guys, not sure about this one, if I buy an American movie DVD, from America and decrypt it will I have any playback problems? or will it just play the same as a region two (UK) DVD. What Im saying is if it is recorded in a format of 30 fps system and UK is 25 fps system will I get slight imperfections in playback. Thinking of buying a movie that is unavailable in the UK . Cheers

visionman

[lowellriggsiam]

I've had Noridc DVDs here in the US and they played normally once they were decrypted. I would assume the same would be true in the reverse.

[Case]

Many european DVD players can output a PAL 60 signal for NTSC discs (PAL color - PAL frame size - NTSC framerate), which most modern PAL tvs display fine, even CRTs.
LCD and plasma flat screens can usually also handle a true NTSC signal.

You should be fine buying this disc.

[hech54]

Long story short...as long as you copy it(thus removing the region code on the disc...IF it even has one) it will be fine because the majority of European equipment can easily handle America's NTSC video format.

[DB83]

If you intend just to play the disk on the PC then you do not need worry about PAL or NTSC since a PC monitor knows nothing about these.

Some PC DVD drives can also be made Region Free which will enable you to play the disk even without decrypting it. You then use a utility called DVD genie to alter the region code on your player. Without this utility, or the drive not being region free, you can still change your PC drive to Region 1 to play the disk although then you are only allowed to change the drive a total of 5 times before it is locked on the last region change.

[Noahtuck]

VLC will ignore region coding on disc's also so you can play the disc directly from your drive where as something like powerdvd will enforce the region coding and force you to change the region settings of which you only have 5.

Or as other's stated, rip the disc to your hdd and the region coding will no longer be an issue.

There are also programs that will run in the background and allow different region set disc's to play with any software without changing the region coding of your drive or flashing the firmware to be region free.

[visionman]

Thanks everyone, very helpful and welcomed advice. Thanks again, cheers

visionman

[intracube]

Hi Guys, not sure about this one, if I buy an American movie DVD, from America and decrypt it will I have any playback problems? or will it just play the same as a region two (UK) DVD. What Im saying is if it is recorded in a format of 30 fps system and UK is 25 fps system will I get slight imperfections in playback. Thinking of buying a movie that is unavailable in the UK . Cheers

As long as you can get round the regional code on the disc, it should play on your computer.

On the issue of differing frame rates, depending on how the DVD has been authored and what media player you use; you might experience frame rate conversion artifacts/juddering:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine#2:3_pulldown

UK DVDs don't suffer from this, as films are converted using a different method - usually a simple ~4% speed-up to convert 24fps>25fps. The side effect of this is a slightly higher pitch to the audio, and a shorter running time.

If you find the juddering distracting, there is a technique called 'inverse telecine' or ivtc which can restore a film to 24fps.