26th June, 2010.

Hi Anyone !

Does anyone have the current situation (June 2010), since the last comments are one year old.

I am in the UK at the moment, and would like to purchase a DVD from the Natural Trust entitled "6,000 years of British History - Britain from the Air" narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi, as a gift to a client who has not yet visited the UK (but is of Greek origin)

The DVD is labelled as "PAL" but the sales staff did know, and I have made a couple of other enquiries, but nobody knows for sure if it can be played on a North American DVD player. Since it costs 25.00 pounds and is for a client, I do not want to buy it with this uncertainty.

We are returning to the UK on July 1st, and I would need a couple of days to find the DVD again - but could probably get it at Hampton Court, which is close to where I am staying.

I will also try an e-mail to the National Trust, and "Flying Pictures Heritage Collection Ltd," who Ithink produced the DVD.

Cheers, and thanks for any help that could be offered.

John Sullivan

E-mail: johnwsullivan@shaw.ca

Hi John;

Many thanks for your prompt reply.

Over the last weekend I met someone wearing a "Geek" T-shirt, so asked him if he knew the answer to my problem !  Seemed to be a responsible type probably in his mid-30's, and he has kindly e-mailed me a site for a free download to enable "Pal" to be played on a north American DVD player.(We live in Vancouver)

He e-mailed it to me today, and I have downloaded it - the reference is " DVDRegionFree59.exe"  (1.19 MB)

I will not know if it works until I purchase the DVD and try it at home -- the download is " Open" to be downloaded until July 3rd.

If you could throw any more light on this matter, it would be appreciated.

Many thanks.

John868

Monday 28th June, 2010

john868 wrote:

 

He e-mailed it to me today, and I have downloaded it - the reference is " DVDRegionFree59.exe"  (1.19 MB)

I will GUESS that exe is really to play a DVD on a computer, since any update to the firmware of a regular DVD player is going to have to come from the vendor of that brand... Sony, Panasonic, etc

The only way I know of to update the firmware of a non-computer DVD player is to obtain an update disc from the vendor... since the DVD player must read the update in its own drive in order to load the update into ROM

It MAY be that the exe you mention is for a specific player, and includes a routine to write the update to a DVD... but since you really don't specify what you have and what the exe is for... I don't know if it will do anything for you for a non-computer DVD player

There are other forums that discuss DVD players (I don't have a link handy) but I **think** there are 2 different issues here

NTSC and PAL have two different video standards... this has nothing to do with region coding, which is (as far as I know) only designed to make it so you need to buy a disc that is specific to the country where you are located

Many/most PAL players will also play NTSC... from what I have read in this forum

Many/most NTSC players will NOT play a PAL disc... again from what I have read here

So... if you have a PAL region 2 disc, and you do not have a PAL all region player, and you live in region 3... you can't play the disc

If you have a North American NTSC player that is not SPECIFICALLY designed to play PAL... you can't play PAL

I Googled the software you mentioned... and it is, as far as I can tell without actually installing, only for a computer... not for a standalone DVD player

See http://www.fbmsoftware.com/spyware-net/process/DVDRegionFree59_exe/384 1/

I also found mention that it MAY be malware... or at least that there may be some versions floating around that are malware

http://www.bestspywarescanner.net/errors/DVDRegionFree59.exe.html

Hi John;

Many thanks for your replies, and the trouble you have taken to find me an answer.

I understand your comment that the "download" is probably only if one is trying to play the DVD on a computer.

I also telephoned the National Trust and a very helpful guy indicated that the DVD I was interested in purchasing could not be adapted to play on North American players, but another DVD they have about many of the National Trust properties can be read by both systems.

So, I have decided not to pursue this idea.

Your assistance has been appreciated by a non-geek guy ! I presume that your expression "malware" means it could have a virus attached. I will watch for your reply tomorrow!

Cheers,

John.

Indeed, the conversation was already dated a year ago. It wasn't accurate then, or now.

I sometimes wonder how much people have actually tested DVD players, rather than repeat a decade-old dogma that "NTSC players don't handle PAL DVDs". Starting about 5 years ago, most DVD players are made from cheap universal kits in cheap-labor Asian countries like China. Back when most DVD players were made in Japan, sure, the North American players were NTSC only, as Japan and North America are NTSC. But with the cheap kits, made in PAL-native lands, virtually all players all over the world can now play NTSC and PAL, and it's been that way for half a decade.

"You can't play PAL in NTSC players" is no longer an accurate statement. Most of them do, in fact, now play PAL without any issues, and have for several years. This includes DVD recorders.

It's not required to play PAL, and maybe 25% of them are still NTSC only (and I think that % is maybe a tad high, but I'm being conservative here). But pretty much everything currently sold new in stores is capable of PAL and NTSC both. The only real obstacle is region encoding. But of course, commercial DVDs can be ripped and copied (no region after that process strips it). And then many DVD players have firmware hacks or "secret" remote codes (service menus) to ignore region coding (or RCE).

For more details, there's a pretty good conversation here: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/showthread.php/uk-dvds-regions-1948.ht ml

I don't know what percentage of US-sold DVD players can play PAL as well as NTSC.

For the most part, it's as simple as country of origin. Most cheaply made players from Asia (non-Japan) can play PAL. There are only a few cheap MPEG DVD decoder chipsets, and a few common kits. In fact, many brands are just rebadging players from a company like Funai (Toshiba, Philip, Magnavox and a few others). I don't know the exact percentage, but it can be pretty well estimated using that information.

However one thing you should know is that even the ones that do play PAL have to convert the PAL signal to NTSC to play on standard US TV sets. They have to change the frame rate because PAL has fewer frames per second than NTSC, and they have to change the resolution of the picture because PAL has more lines than NTSC. And they have to do this on the fly! To do this conversion well requires software and hardware that are not going to be built into any consumer grade DVD player.  So even if your NTSC player is multi-system and can play PAL, smooth motion will be visibly jerky as the player doubles every sixth frame. And the picture will be softened. Depending on the quality of their player and the content of the DVD, viewers may or may not notice it. (This is not an issue when playing the DVD on a computer, as the computer and its screen can play any frame rate equally well and have plenty of 'lines' of resolution.)

While this can be true, it doesn't have to be. Because there isn't a standardized way to convert (or even pseudo convert a "good enough" signal), it varies from model to model. Some crop instead of resize. (Not to mention it's upsize that causes softening, not downsize.) Some interpolate frames quite well, and there's no jerky motion. Most of them simply blur 6 new frames, so motion is still not jerky.

with around 50% of people having first or second generation players and CRT screens

Sorry, but I dispute this information. Most DVD players die within 3-4 years, so it's highly unlikely anybody has an old DVD player that still functions. And then the massive sales of HDTV panels in recent years has easily dislodged a 50% CRT saturation that may have existed, unless you want to count TV sets in kitchens and garages.

nasty recession and buying new DVD or BD players is not exactly top of most priority lists

Walmart, $25. To most people, a functioning DVD player is a priority (right or wrong as that may be.)

Only do standards conversion if you know how to do it properly. Otherwise you'll just mess it up further than any DVD player would have done. That's what I've been getting at -- that was my whole point.