Sorry this is way off topic but I have a question for the members in England, South Africa and Australia. I was asked by a friend of mine to video tape her wedding and create a DVD. She wants to send copys of the DVD to her relatives in England, South Africa and Australia. I believe DVDs in Europe are in PAL format. Does England use the format? What about South Africa and Australia? Do they use PAL as well or does it even matter. Can you watch DVDs that come from the US? I would hate for friend to send her relatives DVDs they can not watch. Again I apologies for being off topic but this is the only forum I am a member of that I know has a world wide membership. Thanks for any help you can give me.

it depends on your dvd player....you can buy region free dvd players..i hve one..but most uk ones are PAL. She could use DVD Shrink to copy it....that removes the region if required....and it is free too

Attached Link: http://www.icestorm-video.com/countries2.cfm

Pal is the standard for the UK, SA and Australia.......Original Kitten has you covered for making it region free if you need to, if you make it an NTSC they will probably be able to watch it but PAL will be a safer bet, not Sure on Australi and SA but here n the UK i'd bet most DVDs can be made region free, recently found hacks for 4 cheapy DVDs to make them region free...........See the link for a country list of formats..Steve

I've sent and have also received DVD's from Denmark, and they worked ok at both ends.

I'm in Texas and European DVD's do not work here unless you have a special DVD player or a Macintosh Computer. The Mac's will change region dependant to the DVD.

oh and uk puters play american dvds....i know mine does anyway

Did you do anything to make them play, mine keeps saying i can only change the region setting 5 times, but i'd like to make it region free on the media center.......Steve

steveshanks, yeah, I had that same problem (luckily it locked on the US setting in the end! LOL). Since I have a bunch of German DVD's, I bought an external DVD player and locked it to the European region. it really freaks the kids out to come into my study to watch a Disney DVD but everyone is speaking German! LOL

I've created NTCS DVDs for clients who've sent them to their employees in Europe. Their PC laptops haven't had problems playing them. However, the DVD players do.

No i didnt....just put it in and it plays....guess im lucky lol...

When he's making the DVD himself, there shouldn't be any regioncode problems. BUT to make them work in standard DVD players, use DVD-R not DVD+R.

Inexpensive newer dvd players can play pal, ntsc, avi files, windows media format, all sorts of things. Older players typically cannot. We bought a Phillips 436 for $49 or so, and we've found very little it cannot play.. plus it's bios can be updated, just like you flash your computer's bios or hardware! And it plays much better then my older uber expensive multi disk player.

I may be wrong but I don't think region coding neceaasrily has anything to do with the video format. You can have PAL or NTSC which may or may not br encoded. The encoding is just a Hollywood "feature" to control release schedules. They can relases a movie in one region and it won't play in others until they release it with that region's code. Of course folks can just rip and do what they want with it. The player's the thing. I have an old DVD-ROM and it won't read some newer DVDs and DVD-Rs. On the plus side, I think I can patch it to be permanently region free.

Yer right, but the Phillips has a hack with the remote that makes it perm region free.

The region "feature" is set when you author the DVD. If a region is not set at that time, the DVD will play in all regions.

If you want to be sure it will work author the DVD's in PAL format for the ones she wants to send overseas. I have a pretty new DVD player (Both external and Computer wise). The computer will play both PAL or NISC but my TV has to be set and so does my external DVD player if I want to play NISC (mine has a PAL/NISC switch). The main difference between the two is that PAL has more frames than NISC. Hence most NISC discs will work but they will play a lot faster (like watching in fast forward). The problem you might have with authoring in PAL is you might run out of room on a DVD-/+ R unless u are using Dual Layer. This is also the reason why most US DVD's come chocka block loaded with "Special Features" and PAL versions u get a smaller amount because we need the space for the extra frames.

Yes, regions are only used for commercial stuff when the originator wants to limit use of the DVD geographically, so region is not an issue for you. Create a standard PAL DVD and you're OK. And preferably use a DVD-R disc (not DVD+R or any kind of RW or RAM) as that is the most widely used and least often a problem in set top players. :] Fish

Attached Link: http://www.high-techproductions.com/pal,ntsc.htm

Link to NTAS/PAL/SECAM country list.