izzi81

I'm a bit confused about this one. We brought our DVD player from the UK (along with loooads of DVDs). Today was the first time I tried plugging it in, and it works fine (thought it would because the voltage is 110-240v). However, I've hit an unexpected problem... the TV doesn't seem to like it! I'm getting a grey image flickering and scrolling up the screen. It's not a very new TV - second hand - but it's a Sony.

Any thoughts? Anyone else have this problem? I never had any problems with my UK TV playing NTSC DVDs, but I don't know if it could be an issue the other way round.... If it's not fixable, can anyone recommend a multi-region DVD player I can buy in Canada?

haggis88

could it be something to do with the refresh rate?

I'm sure Euro TV's use a 50Hz rate and NA TV's use 60Hz...are you plugging in through SCART or HDMI or something else?

my advice would be go to BestBuy/Futureshop or Walmart and look for the cheapest one that says "Multi Region" on it...they're all much of a muchness unless you're into the techie side of your entertainment system

izzi81

yeah I am wondering about that. Just tried our Wii and the same thing is happening - picture scrolls up the screen. So a new DVD will fix the DVD problem but not the Wii problem!

orly

Different standards.

Always been this way...way back when the original playstation was popular you could play games on an EU version from the US but the picture would be grey.

Imagine something similar still happens but I don't have any gaming consoles nor a DVD collection (how 20th century)

DandNHill

We bought the cheapy DVD player from Canadian Tire. Under $20. You then have to google an unlock code... It's very simple. Think it's a digitron...

Aqua

You need a converter...... Look at www.bombayelectrics.com.....

They do pal-SECAM and reverse

izzi81

ah yes I think a converter would do the job! Thankfully they have a super basic no-HDMI one as well. Thanks

I see they also do voltage converters, I think I'll get one of them at the same time!

Aqua

And they are a lot cheaper than buying from a Canadian retailer, take a look at the region free DVD players! That's we're we got ours from........

London-England-Lads

Sadly we had the same problem with a new smart TV.

Luckily, we brought our UK television which works amazingly well over here so we were able to plug in all the UK stuff (wii and DVD).

Oakvillian

Sounds like you have a PAL/NTSC problem. For DVDs, it might be easily resolved by buying an upconverting DVD player that sends the signal to the TV through an HDMI cable - that's a digital signal and doesn't depend on the tuner inside the TV. To play your UK DVDs you need a region-free player. Many of the cheaper DVD players are not region-encoded; for posher ones some have a software hack to undo the region encoding - there are a few websites out there that list these by model number.

It's more of an issue for your Wii, though. I had a similar problem several years ago with a Sony PS2. I got hold of a PAL-to-NTSC converter, which fixed the picture issue but made many games completely unplayable: the converter takes a (small but finite) amount of time to process the signal conversion, so by the time you turn the steering wheel or shoot the monster, you've already crashed into the wall or been shot at.

Aqua

I meant Pal - NTSC....... Doh!!

DandNHill

Had to chuckle at that!

izzi81

I hadn't thought of the time delay... That's not good! Our tv doesn't have an hdmi connection, it's an older 2nd hand tv. I guess the converter will fix the DVD for the moment but not necessarily the wii. The DVD is more... Urgent, so will get a converter for that and see how it goes. This was a problem I didn't plan for!!

Theoldfields

We did the same thing.

MikeUK

Your Tv may have a component input, you can use this if you have it
Its three phono/rca conector on the back for video (normaly red/green/& blue) as well as two for audio (red/white)

your best cance of help is to post up the model number of the dvd player an the TV