PAL DVD conundrum... enlighten me please

[Skycap]

Hello... I recently purchased a DVD movie exclusively released in Argentina (which is supposedly a PAL country), but the DVD is 29.97 fps @ 720x480i. Those are NTSC specs so what gives? Another thing: When I popped it into my Mac via an external drive it gave me the option to choose between Region 1 and 4. Could someone clear this up for me?

Thanks

[Noahtuck]

Just because it's from a "pal" country does not mean it can not be "ntsc".

And you can set the region of dvd's to be any single or multiple regions you want.

But seeing as no one knows where you are, take a shot and choose whatever region you want, but you will have lost 1 out of 5 changes for that drive.

[DB83]

And ntsc shouild playback fine on pal equipment whereas the reverse it not so easy.

But it sound like this disk, although released for Argentina, is also released for the US market. Region 4, as you probably know, covers the whole of South America.

[jman98]

Argentina's version of PAL is very weird. For some unknown reason, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay use PAL video with an NTSC color subcarrier. So DVDs in the region are made in NTSC because the color is the same and the TVs and DVD players are made to convert NTSC video to PAL resolutions and frame rates. Brazil does the same thing with their DVDs (they also make NTSC DVDs), although their version of PAL is a bizarre version of PAL that is NTSC compatible in terms of frame rates but uses a different color carrier. Brazilian DVD players and TVs need only convert the color to PAL-M from NTSC DVD.

For years now Hong Kong and Macau have made NTSC DVDs as well although both are clearly PAL countries. I mean true PAL, not these weird South American variants. I have guessed that the reason may be that local DVD players and TVs are all multi-format and producing DVDs in NTSC makes them suitable for export to the USA/Canada unchanged and most Europeans can play them too if they have converting equipment (most Europeans do have this). Most North American DVD players actually can't play PAL or convert it and the majority of TVs can't display PAL, so producing PAL DVDs does more or less remove North America as a potential export market.