What good are region settings?

[Parrappa]

I download lots of movies, but most of them come in PAL, and I was getting sick and tired of converting them all to NTSC before I could burn and watch them.... Then I looked up on the dvd player list on this site, and found my player... "Magnavox MDV450" Now under it, somebody posted a region hack, by pressing 1 4 times on the conroller, I could change the region settings...They also said that it didn't matter what kind of TV you had, as long as the player supported the format, you were fine. So I changed the region settings, but my PAL movies still do not play, they still roll down the screen in black and white constantly. But yet, what I find a little strange is, that my NTSC movies play in R1, R2, and 0. But PAL wont play in any of them.. I also tried this on about 5 different TV's 4 of them brand new.....Could somebody be kind enough to clear up for me the PAL/NTSC thing, and how I could watch the PAL movies with my Player, without converting them.

[housepig]

okay, there is a difference between region settings and PAL/NTSC.

region settings were a means by which the industry could control the release of dvd's worldwide. it has nothing to do with the technical aspects of the video itself, only the playback characteristics of the disc.

PAL & NTSC are different standards for video equipment in different parts of the world. The resolutions and frame rates are different. It has nothing to do with region coding.

So it doesn't matter if you have a Region 1 PAL dvd and a Region 1 NTSC player, that player is most likely not going to play the disc.

You will either need to get a player that can play both types of video, or you need to convert from one format to the other. Check the Convert guides at left, there are some to go either direction.

[thor300]

Your player can obviously play PAL, far the most players can. BUT your TV does not support PAL signals, so you need to force the signals to be in NTSC, even when playing PAL disks. Now that is something not all players can do, Pioneer had it for a long time, and some of the other brands has followed. Check your players manual or on the web, maybe it has some way of changing the output signal, also on most Pioneers its no special button or meny for it.