NTSC vs PAL

[gerardf]

Hi All,

First off, I'm in Australia. Presumably, that's a good thing!

Seriously, I created a DVD in PAL format for a Media Arts course here in Australia. I sent a copy to a friend in Kansas as well as my brother who lives in San Francisco. My brother's copy plays fine on his iMac but my friend in KS is having all sorts of problems.

First off, her DVD player refused to play on account of not having a multi-region DVD. She bought a new DVD player to try to solve the multi-region issue. She emailed me this morning with the "latest instalment" of where she's at..........

"OK, I have the Cyberhome CH DVD 402. I used the vcdhelp.com website. And looked under the DVD hacks... The instructions were extremely simply and when I exited and returned (after trying the disc,) I still had the region code 0 so it seemed like it should have worked. I am a bit frustrated, it seemed like it would be so easy. The player is cheap, the remote really sucks and you have to really push the 'buttons'. But since I had the region code at 0 on return seems like it should have worked. It was there, just all wavy and not viewable."

Does this seem like a PAL vs NTSC issue to anyone?

Any comments that may help would be great.


Thanks,

Gerard

[vitualis]

"wavy" = PAL/NTSC compatibility problem.

If the DVD player can convert between standards, then try that (usually involves manually setting the player to output NTSC or PAL).

If the DVD player is not capable of standards conversion, then your US friend will need to get a multisystems TV (or a DVD player than CAN convert).

Regards.

[bugster]

It certainly is not a region encoding problem as 'home' produced DVD's do not have region coding on them.

It could be a media problem, but according to the DVD players list here this player will play almost anything.

So I can only think it is some sort of authoring problem. It may play on an Imac, but software DVD players in general tend to be a lot more forgiving of these kind of things than standalone players.

Even if it does play in a US player, the user will need a player that does NTSC to PAL conversion, or a multistandard TV (PAL and NTSC) TV to view it.

[Gazorgan]

Don't switch the DVD player to PAL, how is she going to switch it back without a PAL TV (Good like finding some in the states).

Just watch it on a Computer. Short of the few DVD Players that will convert PAL to NTSC, that's the only realistic way.

[vitualis]

"Switching" the player to one setting or another usually involves no more than changing a setting on the OSD and remote...

If the player can convert between PAL and NTSC, then you will have to hard set the player to display in "NTSC" (i.e., the player will output NTSC regardless of input -- i.e., converting PAL --> NTSC).

Regards.