couple "playing Pal in Ntsc" questions

[spiritgumm]

My PC (and my old Pioneer dvd player which does not play Pal perfectly) shows the runtime for a Pal dvd at about 90 minutes. However, the dvd insert says it's 95 minutes, which is what the film itself is (according to my retail Ntsc vhs and imdb).
My questions are: would a Pal dvd player play the dvd differently than my equipment, making it run 95 minutes?
If not, then it seems the film was sped up (the voices do sound a tad higher in the dvd player when compared with the vhs). Would they do that for a movie (from 1965) that I believe originated in the UK?

[Krispy Kritter]

Runtime is often affected as the player converts the video for output to your TV. If you had a PAL or PAL capable TV, then your player could simply output the PAL video unaltered. Since you are in the US, I assume your player is converting the PAL video into NTSC format for your TV. The conversion, as I noted above, is what can affect the output quality. This of course vary from player to player based on their chipset.

[spiritgumm]

I've read that dvd burners are not Pal nor Ntsc (though they can be region-locked). If so, then my PC should show the runtime for a dvd whether it's Pal or Ntsc. I just wanted to get some confirmation of this, so I could decide whether to trust my PC or the dvd insert info.

[guns1inger]

Is this a consistent problem, or just a problem with a small number of discs ?

If I had a dollar for everything the running time was incorrect on a DVD case insert, I would have a lot more DVDs. I suspect at least 10% of the DVDs I own have the wrong running time. This can be for various reasons. Sometimes it is as simple as putting the NTSC running time on a PAL DVD. Sometimes it is because the running time is for a different edit of the film, and sometimes it is just a ****-up. Hell, my Brazil disc says 95 minutes on the insert, but is the much longer Director's Cut on the disc.

You are right - PCs are format agnostic. They neither know, nor care, if a disc is NTSC or PAL. This is why they can also play movies that run at only 12 fps, and 120 fps.

The first thing I do when I see that the insert is different to the running time of the disc itself is try to find out what the original running time of the material is, and what the original format was. If it was film, for example, it is easy to do a quick conversion from Film to PAL to see if they match. If they don't (give or take a few seconds) and you are still concerned, then you need to research the history of the film. Many films go through many edits. Especially films from the 60s and 70s made in Europe or the UK. Strange deals meant that different countries got different cuts with very different running times. Also, UK censorship means that even films like The Matrix or recent Bond films were often edited to some degree. It might mean only a few seconds, or a minute or two. Sometimes it is even worse. In the 80's Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was released in the UK with a running time of just under 45 minutes, thanks to the censors scissors.

However this is only worth doing if you are particularly curious, or feel particularly ripped off. Otherwise put it down to being a printing cockup and move on with your life.