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December 27, 2006
It's no Pal of mine
Among the gifts they I got for Christmas my favorites were Volume 14 & 15 of the old 1950's TV show The Adventures of Robin Hood staring Richard Greene. If you are an old fellow like myself you might remember this first rate show.
If you go to the Amazon page where they are sold you will note that a reviewer from Jerusalem suggests purchasing the entire seasons (4) instead. I would be very happy to do so if they were available in NTSC format but unfortunately Amazon England only sells them in PAL format.
This is a good time to explain what the region settings on DVD's are and what they mean. To quote from this article by Robert Silva:
To keep it simple, this means that DVD players and DVDs are labeled for operation on within a specific geographical region in the world. For example, the U.S. is in region 1. This means that all DVD players sold in the U.S. are made to region 1 specifications. As a result, region 1 players can only play region 1 discs. That's right, the DVDs themselves are encoded for a specific region. On the back of each DVD package, you will a find a region number (1 thru 6).The geographical regions are as follows:
REGION 1 -- USA, Canada
REGION 2 -- Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 -- S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 -- Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 -- Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6 -- China
REGION 7 -- Reserved for Unspecified Special Use
REGION 8 -- Reserved for Cruise Ships, Airlines, etc...
REGION 0 or REGION ALL -- Discs are uncoded and can be played Worldwide, however, PAL discs must be played in a PAL-compatible unit and NTSC discs must be played in an NTSC-compatible unit.The end result is that DVDs encoded for regions other than Region 1 cannot be played on a region 1 DVD player, also, players marketed for other regions cannot play region 1-stamped DVDs.
As a practical matter you will not run into much of an issue unless you are purchasing overseas or from a source like eBay. The primary purpose of this is to cut back of piracy however Mr. Silva suggests that there is a hint of price fixing involved.
For my own personal issue it doesn't change a thing since it's not the regions that are killing me but Pal vs NTSC issue. My wife however has accidentally solved that problem too with a $40 Philips DVP642 player that unknown to me until I was researching for this post actually automatically converts PAL to NTSC. The reviews of the device aren't very inspiring, but what do you want for $40?
Robin Hood Season 4 here I come!
Posted by Peter at December 27, 2006 09:17 AM