Copied PAL DVD-r plays in computer, not in standalone player

[Jay M]

I have a DVD-r copied from a PAL format disc. In the standalone Panasonic it looks like a fast rolling TV image. But in the PC it looks and plays just fine (I had to adjust the aspect ratio setting). I assume the PAL was changed to NTSC somehow, since my computer drive does not play PAL.
Does anyone know a way to get the standalone machine to play this disc? I have tried aspect ratio changes, but nothing has worked

Thanks

[mats.hogberg]

Computers are unaware of TV systems like PAL and NTSC. More likely, you have a PAL disc - and that causes the rolling picture on your TV. Either get a DVD/TV that supports PAL, or convert the DVD to NTSC.

/Mats

[Jay M]

Thanks, but I tried PAL DVDs on the computer and they would not play at all. So since this one was copied with an NTSC recorder I thought it was already converted and that's why it plays on the PC. But maybe it was the region coding that prevented the previous PAL discs from playing.

[mats.hogberg]

Probably region protection, yes, which so many seem to confuse with NTSC/PAL issues.

/Mats

[jman98]

Your copied DVD is PAL. It played on the PC because 1) PCs don't care about PAL/NTSC and will play both 2) region coding was turned off. This copied DVD won't display correctly on your TV because your DVD player is sending out a PAL TV signal to an NTSC TV. Your other PAL DVDs don't play on your PC because of Region Coding. If a region-free firmware exists for your PC DVD drive you might be able to use DVD Genie (depending on your DVD playing software) to get around this problem. There is a commercial program that defeats region protection on a PC, but I don't remember what it is.

Possible fixes for TV problem -
1) Set DVD player output to NTSC. Most likely your player is defaulting to something like "ANY", which means that it sends out the same output signal as is on the DVD. PAL on DVD, PAL output to TV.
2) Probably your DVD player does support PAL discs. What you described usually means it will play the disc, but you have a PAL-NTSC mismatch, where the DVD players is sending out one (PAL in this case) and TV expects the other (NTSC). You could always buy a cheap player that can convert PAL to NTSC. Cyberhome models can do this. So can the Philips DVP-642. Others can as well.
3) My last choice - you can convert the PAL DVD to NTSC and re-author it, but depending on how you do the conversion, this may not (or may - it all depends) give good results.

[Jay M]

Many thanks to both of you for the great responses.

I already tried copying the disc on the PC using DVD Shrink. It just made a copy that performs the same way. So I would not know how to re-format.

Thanks for the tip, I will see if I can set the stanalone's output to NTSC

Regards
JM