Is an R2 DVD always PAL? (1 Viewer)

[Chris PC]

Just wondering how it works. I live in Canada but the R1 release of Smiley's People is apparantly really bad, with missing parts etc, its for father who has read these books, so I need the best. The R2 is better, but is that PAL?

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Europe=PAL
Japan=NTSC

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Europe=PAL
Japan=NTSC

That is the general rule, but in r4 at least, Warners in particular have taken to giving us their r1 NTSC transfers for some of the older back-catalogue movies, even though NZ and Australia are PAL. Very infuriating. I don't know whether r2 has to put up with NTSC releases, but r4 Warner DVDs are not always PAL.

 

[Chris PC]

Ok. I am in NA looking to use a R2 released DVD cause the R1 release is apparantly not so good.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Right, well we need to know which R2 you're talking about. Europe or Japan?

 

[Yee-Ming]

R3 is "worse" in that current releases are almost always NTSC, even though broadcast TV is PAL. But perhaps precisely for this reason, everything sold here is multi-system and almost all of us have no trouble with NTSC material.

 

[Brett C]

Most of the World has Multi System as a standard, on TV's, VCR's and DVD players. Certainly through Europe, Asia and Australasia anyway...

 

[Mark Zimmer]

There are also a handful of British releases that are R0 NTSC format for whatever reason. The Bounty SE and The Dead Zone SE are two of these, but I don't know about Smiley.

 

[Mark_Wilson]

I don't think Smiley's People is out in R2 yet.

 

[Malcolm Cleugh]

I don't think Smiley's People is out in R2 yet

Its not in the UK anyway.
The BBC are probably waiting to see how their release of Tinker, Tailor, ... sells to see if they will bother releasing it or licensing it to someone else.

On the other subject in this tread, the occasional R2 title is released as NTSC (eg Sex & City Season 1) when the distributor is trying to save money on not doing a PAL version. There is also increasing amounts of music DVDs released here as R0 NTSC so they can be sold worldwide and also because of speed up issues some complain about on sound.