PAL and NTSC on DVDs
 

My boss just asked me and I couldn't answer. We're in India and someone is producing a DVD for viewing in both Europe and the US. Do we need to ensure that the US-bound DVDs are NTSC formatted?

I watch Indian and US movies all the time on my laptop, but I don't know about US DVD players.

Hi,

I don't think it's as much a question of the DVD player, but rather the TV that it will be displayed on. You will notice that you can play any DVD on your laptop (as long as the zone is correct).

As such, I would recommend that you do select the NTSC format for the US bound ones, just to be on the safe side.

Cheers,

GenevaFlyer

Might depend on the player but my DVD player puts out both PAL/NTSC. After changing the region coding to all regions, i can now play region 2 pal on my ntsc tv.

This is correct, it depends on the functionality of the DVD player. Lots of DVD players made in the past 3 years have PAL/NTSC transcoding. So they can properly display PAL or NTSC video on any TV.

I'm guessing since this is a custom made DVD you don't have to worry about region encoding, but just in case I would make sure they make the region set to ALL. Are you controlling the DVD playback? Or are you just sending these out? If you are sending these out, then you need to make sure you have both PAL and NTSC versions.

I've found that the DVD player does make a difference. Last year, we brought a bunch of DVDs back from Australia. They wouldn't play in the US Sony DVD player but would play in my 7" portable player that I take on flights. I connected the portable player to an input port on my analog TV set and they played normally.

The Aussie DVDs also worked normally on the computer, which makes me think that there wouldn't be a problem playing them through a digital TV set.

I did look on line and found some multi-region/multi-system DVD players and DVRs. They're not cheap. My advice would be to bring the DVD home and try them on the equipment you already own before you go and buy more hardware.

Absolutely. Most US players don't handle PAL. Oddly, it's usually the "no name" bargain players than can handle both, though I've found the PAL to NTSC conversion that they perform is less than smooth.

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers

You can look up your DVD player and see if it will handle PAL and NTSC.

Incidentally, I picked up an NTSC/PAL DVD player -- a Panasonic -- from J&R (www.jr.com) for, if I recall correctly, around $60. This wasn't one of those bargain cheapies that breaks in less than a year, but a pretty good machine. I bought it for Mrs. PTravel so that she can watch Chinese movies that she picks up when we go visit. It works great -- very smooth conversion, no audio sync problems, and it somehow manages to compensate for the speed difference, so everything looks normally paced.