Can I see PAL discs played on a computer that is connected to my TV?

[ibzomie]

I bought an entire set of a long-sought-after British TV series, only to get it home and find out that it is in PAL format. And to compound the problem, being a British series, the discs are Region 2. The discs play fine on my computer and monitor, but my computer room is not set up for comfortable TV watching.

I was fooled, I think, because I've never seen commercially manufactured PAL other-region discs for sale around here before today. I think the used-book store where I bought them probably also didn't realize what they were.

If I place a computer in the cabinet near the TV and connect them with an HDMI cable, will I be able to play these discs on the computer drive and watch them on my TV?

The TV is an LG LCD. Without pulling the TV out of the cabinet to look at the back, the model number is either 32LB9D or 47LCDF, according to the owner's manual. It's only a couple years old or so.

I understand that I can probably rip them and then reburn them, but I'm talking 23 seasons (although they are shorter British seasons)
worth of discs.

Worse comes to worst, I can take them back for a refund or store credit, but this is a hard to find TV series, and I want to keep them if I can figure out a way to view them.

[hello_hello]

The short answer is yes. If you can connect a PC via HDMI and it'll play the DVDs, yes you can watch them that way.

You can rip and reburn them and that'll remove the region restriction in the process, however they'll still be PAL and chances are your DVD/Bluray player won't play them. To get around that you'd either need to convert them to NTSC, or convert them to standalone files such as MP4 or MKV, assuming you have a standalone player that'll play those types of files. Either way it'll probably be a fair bit of work to do it properly, and if you can use a PC instead.... well a PC can be configured to play pretty much anything.

[usually_quiet]

If using a PC with the TV is acceptable, the TV will work as well as a monitor would.

If you find you don't like that solution for one reason or another, you can try ripping and burning one disc to test your player(s). Sometimes you get lucky. I bought a Philips DVD player and an LG Blu-Ray player for my parents. When I tested them with a region-free PAL DVD, to my surprise both played PAL video and converted it to be compatible with an NTSC TV. My Magnavox DVD recorder can do the same trick. My Panasonic machine rejected the DVD. Note that none of these machines is region-free, so region restrictions still must be removed.

[Skiller]

It works, but unless the TV does support 50 Hz refresh rate (I heard US TVs are quite picky in this regard) there will be judder when the video is played back through a 60 Hz refresh rate from the PC. Watchable, but annoying.

[jagabo]

Americans are used to seeing judder on TV. The OP probably won't even notice it.