World video formats (Was: CoS DVD in French)

[Amanda Pressnell]

On 14 Mar 2003 at 13:08, Petra Pan wrote:
> 
> Are you sure that CD's are regionally 
> coded?  I could swear that I've played 
> CD's from foreign countries in my 
> American player before.  And I remember 
> playing my American CD's in other 
> countries' equipment.

CDs are *not* regionally coded. I've thanked my lucky stars many, many times because of this. Videos/DVDs are enough of an annoyance to convert as it is.

In addition to DVD regions, countries use different television standards: NTSC (US, Canada, Japan), PAL (UK, Europe, Australia, NZ), and SECAM (France). In the US, even 
if you find a mult-region DVD player it doesn't really do you much good unless it also converts these standards - or you have a PAL TV (..that can run on 110v but lets not 
get into voltage differences too!). This also affects regular ol' VHS. If you order a video from overseas you may have to pay $15 - $25 to have it converted. Of PAL and NTSC, 
PAL is of higher quality. That is why many PAL VCRs (and DVD players?) can play NTSC (though not perfectly) but not vise versa. There are multi-format VCRs that you 
can buy but they are pricey.

More about the world standards:
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Contrib/WorldTV/

A chart of which countries use which format:
http://www.sphereproject.org/pal_ntsc.htm

The challenges of buying DVDs from other parts of the world:
http://hometheaterinfo.com/dvd3.htm

> VJH:
> > DVDs are region coded, if that's what
> > you meant. Europe as a whole has the
> > same coding, regardless of countries. 
> > Therefore, a Dutch copy would work
> > find with British equipment. In 
> > fact, a South African or Japanese copy
> > would work, too.

However, most of Europe is PAL and Japan is NTSC. I take it that PAL DVD players will convert?

Manda
--
http://www.MandaMia.com