Will a US HD-A3 Play HD Pal discs ?

[ofield1]

Hi,

I was wondering if the HD-A3 can play pal HD-DVD Disc's, and if not
is there any hack or firmware that will allow it do so.

If not are their any HD Players that will play both right out of the
box.

I heard somewhere there was a way to make HD-A2 models play Pal.

Thanks for the help. Pal has titles that US does not.

[Grain]

The A2 & XA2 can be modded to play PAL DVD's (and be region free), but not out of the box. They won't convert PAL however, they will just output it. ie your TV will still need to be able to display PAL resolutions.

[jman98]

None of the current generation of HD DVD players can play PAL discs, including the A3. Yes, the A2 and XA2 can be modded as Grain says, but they are the only ones.

Toshiba's HD DVD players could do a lot more than they do. I have the HD-A30 and I have a DVD I made myself with MPEG-1 video. It plays it. So they could support VCD and SVCD, but they don't. If the A2 and XA2 can play PAL discs, the A3, A30 and A35 probably could too. I'm not going to hold my breath on hacked firmware though.

If you just want to play PAL DVDs, it's best to get a converting DVD player. Oppo (http://www.oppodigital.com) makes a variety of players that can do this.

[jman98]

By the way, there's no such thing as "HD PAL" discs. HD DVD discs are all in 1080p, 24 fps. If you know of any HD DVD titles that are actually in 25 fps, I'd like to know which ones as I am not aware of any, but in theory such discs could exist. However, Toshiba made such a big deal about HD DVD not having region codes and wanting content makes to stick to 1080p at 24 fps that I'm not sure why anyone would produce a 25 fps HD DVD.