Why can't I play this DVD? (1 Viewer)

[Mike Frezon]

Stupid title for the thread...but that's the essence of my question. I hope someone can help me. I received a DVD from an internet friend in the Netherlands. The DVD is being marketed by Disneyland Paris.

In the technical language on the back of the packaging is the following:

Zones - toutes

Informations techniques - DVD9, Stereo AC3, Format 4:3 (1,33) couleurs PAL

I thought because I believe "toutes" basically translates to "all", I would be able to play it. But, I also see the "PAL". My player, a rather simple Toshiba SD-1600, simply says the disc is not NTSC and shuts down.

No hope, huh?

Thanks for any insights/help you can give me on this.

 

[Cees Alons]

Mike,

Apparently it's marked as the famous region 0. That means your player will accept it.

But because the signal is PAL encoded, your player needs to accept that too. And, furthermore, you must be able to display a PAL (625 lines) image or convert it to NTSC.

Did you try playing it in your PC already?


Cees

 

[Mike Frezon]

:b ...Mike ashamedly admits he doesn't have a DVD player (let alone a DVD recorder) in his PC....



...but then realizes since his wife wants to see this DVD rather desperately there may be no better time to upgrade to a DVD player/recorder for the computer!


So, Cees... There are multi-region DVD players which do this PAL > NTSC conversion? And, is there anything in particular I should look for in an internal PC DVD drive to handle this particular task and anything else I'm not thinking of?

 

[Cees Alons]

Mike,

DVD drives start region free. In the past they used to stay that way, but since a certain date, Jan, 1st (1999, I believe), they can only change a number of times (usually 5) and then fix to the region they are playing at that moment.

Evil rumours are very persistent, about firmware patches to be all over the net for many popular drives, to either set them back, or to remove the '5-times' rule, but of course I know nothing about that.

Another legal option is having more than 1 DVD players (e.g. 2 for region 1 and 2 respectively) in your PC. With the current prices that's not too bad and you must train each one then to play a different region in the end.

The number of lines (NTSC or PAL) isn't a problem on your PC. You DO need an mpeg decoder (generally a program like that comes with the drive). Or else you download (and pay) WinDVD - this one will also allow you to capture screen images off DVDs, supposing you might have a place were you want to store and/or post them, or so.


Cees

 

[Mike Frezon]

Cees:

Thank you for your patience in dealing with this very uninformed forum member. I am sure most people here in this section are shaking their heads and wondering how I ever wandered in here in the first place.

I will now, with my tail between my legs, back out quietly so as not to disturb the informed discussions that are already underway!

 

[Steve Christou]

[shakes head]

 

[Mike Frezon]

Cees:

Tried out the DVD in my daughter's PC. Played beautifully. Will try to use this to leverage a new DVD drive for my own machine. Thanks again for your help.