Region coding aside (which I oppose!) how does playing a foreign DVD work? The PAL TV standard has more vertical resolution than NTSC and a slower refresh rate. Do you lose part of the picture? Do NTSC DVD's look distorted on PAL systems? Does DVD compensate for the differences in resolution, even on systems that aren't normally supposed to play foreign discs (but can be made to by entering a code)?
From what I have heard, you can play foreign DVDs in your PC. All you need is to tweak a few things and obtain a cracked copy of the viewing program. Never tried it myself, so be sure to discuss it with somebody who has before doing it yourself.
JohnL wrote:
>
> Region coding aside (which I oppose!) how does playing a
> foreign DVD work? The PAL TV standard has more vertical
> resolution than NTSC and a slower refresh rate. Do you lose
> part of the picture? Do NTSC DVD's look distorted on PAL
> systems? Does DVD compensate for the differences in
> resolution, even on systems that aren't normally supposed to
> play foreign discs (but can be made to by entering a code)?
In order to play an R2 PAL disc in the States you need an all region player (or one that has been modified to be all region) and a player that will play PAL discs. These come in two types: 1) a player that plays PAL discs, but outputs them in PAL format, which requires that you have either a multi-system TV (PAL compatible) or a stand alone signal converter that converts the PAL into NTSC; or 2) a player that converts the PAL signal into NTSC for you. A cheap option available (for number 2) on the market right now is the Cyberhome DVD-500 which is available at Amazon.com or at Best Buy stores.
The problem with viewing PAL output on an NTSC set without conversion is that you get a vertical role (and there may be some other problems as well) that can't be corrected on most modern sets.
Now if you live in the UK for example and want to play R1 NTSC discs on a PAL set, I'm pretty sure you'd have the same problems listed above. You'd need an all region player, and either a signal converter, a multisystem TV, or a player that converts from NTSC to PAL. I've never researched that end of the problem, so I don't have any experience there.
Curiously, all R2 players can handle both NTSC and PAL. This is because Region 2 not only covers all of Europe which is PAL (most countries) and SECAM (France and parts of Eastern Europe), but also covers Japan which uses NTSC. Because of this, as long as you make sure to buy a multi-region DVD player or get the DVD player chipped, the player will play discs from anywhere with no problems, and without the need for a converter.
On the computer side of the issue, a computer usually allows the DVD region to be changed up to 5 times, and can handle all types of DVDs. To continue changing the DVD region you will need a hack to reset the software counter (this will need to be run for every 5 times you change the region), and a firmware hack to get rid of the hardware counter; this will only need to be run once, but could permanently damage your DVD drive (personally I've hacked the firmware of both my computers, and they work fine). These can all be found on the net.
Ok, so it's not as easy as buying a DVD player that can be set to a different region. I imagine that computers wouldn't have the same PAL/NTSC issues, since they don't use a TV standard and can do various resolutions?