Paul&Dawn

We want to order a DVD from a British website, but it says under technical information that it is "encoded" for Europe, Japan and the Middle East. What does this mean? If we order it from Britain for use in the U.S., will it work? We found out that a conversion is needed for videos. Is it the same situation for DVDs?

Thanks!

jdlally

No they will not work in the US - likewise the US DVD's will not work in the UK. If you have or are likely to buy a new Apple Mac then you have three chances to set the region to play DVD's to either the UK or US so you could choose but if I were you I would not bother at all. US DVD's come out first and are a hell of a lot cheaper than in the UK.

Could you do me a favour and see if you can answer my posting now! It's titled ' Moving back to the US' by jdlally!

Thanks!

dunroving

You can get a UK DVD to work here but you'd need a multi-region DVD player and a TV that can convert the PAL/NTSC signal. There have been previous threads with detailed advice on this. Search for DVD or "
region"

One reason to buy a UK DVD is if you want to watch a movie or show that's not available in the US (there's a surprising amount of UK stuff now available - but still some that's not). It may not be worth going through the hassle unless you have a large UK collection or there's UK stuff you really want to watch....

ireland132

I asked this question a lot before I relocated to the US a few months ago.

I brought my UK VHS video player, my UK DVD player and my UK PS2 (note that they all say 50/60Hz on the back i.e. they will work on the frquency of US power).

I also brought all my UK DVDs, videos and playstation2 games

Last week I just bought a Hitachi multi region TV for $299 and a 300W electrical transformer.

Now, I can watch all my UK DVDs, all my UK videos and play all my PS2 games no problem.

If you have a big collection like me, it's worth doing.

JeanDupont

I know I already posted this once but if you want to de-regionalise & de-macrovision & de-copyprotect your dvd disks so they will work anywhere
then copy them using a PC with a DVD Burner and the programs anydvd (to remove everything) and clonedvd (to copy them).
The copy will work a treat anywhere in the world. It will not of course affect your original.

Anydvd program latest version 3.xx also enables you to play and back up protected audio cds (usually Sony) which will not otherwise play on a PC.

Oh yes - if you run anydvd in the background on your PC your dvd drive (even if region locked from too many changes) will play any region disk.

good_idea_marge

We bought a multi-region DVD player from Amazon for about £40. Works like a charm on US & UK DVDs.

dunroving

What is the legal situation with buying multi-region DVD players in the UK? I mean, you can't buy them from the local Comet, correct? Only online? Are they "legal"? Or is it one of those things the law turns a blind eye to?

excpomea

This is how I see it.
Manufactures are not going to produce different DVD players for each zone.
It would cost more than producing one type of dvd and setting the code to work for the region that it is sold in.
Hence, most DVD players are multi region.
My pioneer just needed a specific sequence of buttons pushed to turn it from a US DVD player to a multi region player.
I got the code from a web site, I can't remember the one but I will find it and post it later.
The recode procedure took about 30 seconds .

nathan barley

Most DVD players have an engineer's code which you can enter. This will allow you to set the region code to your liking. Use Google, and search using your DVD player's product code, for example, mine is "Sony DVP-NC665P".

If you're using the DVD ROM drive in your PC, DVD Genie and DVD-Region Free can set your drive to be region free.

jdlally

Alright then, seeing as there are so many smarties out there amongst you all - can anyone tell me how you can fool an Apple Powerbook laptop into becoming multi-regional. My Powerbook gave me 3 chances to decide which region to choose - I settled with US region 1 but of course cannot play UK DVD's now - Any Mac fans out there who know........?

James

JeanDupont

JDLALLY you might want to have a look here

http://superdrive.cynikal.net/#q08

it may or not be relevant to your drive - the multi region patch is discussed near the bottom of the page.

DaveC

Someone posted this link in the Lounge. Look on the left and scroll down to DVD Hacks, click on that and then search for your player. I've used this site to hack 2 US DVD players to play UK DVDs.

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/

excpomea

Hey, that's the one Great site.

Duncan Roberts

The biggest problem is not the region coding but the frequency that the DVD is. A US DVD will work with pretty much any multi region DVD player and a UK TV but its not the case in reverse. You either need a TV that supports PAL output, a PAL to NTSC converter or a DVD player that converts for you.
I went for the latter and got a Malata DVP-520 (from www.hkflix.com) Its got 120-240 input so can plugged in almost any country without transformers, a built in converter to play any DVDs on any TV and a whole bunch of connection options. You can also scale DVDs as sometimes UK widescreen gets messed up with the conversion, so you rescale to what it sould be. I like it a lot

tweakr

In Europe, most TV sets will be able to show NTSC (American system) signals also, and a lot of players can be easily made to be multi-region with remote codes or mod chips.

In the US, most TVs will only show NTSC so like people have said, you have region locks and display standards as problems.

The easiest fix I can think of is to watch DVDs on your PC - DVD ROM drives are very cheap, probably $60 or less, and all you need is a good DVD player program (such as Cyberlink PowerDVD) and a program such as DVD Region Free to bypass the region lockout.

(Keep in mind that while it's very rare, some discs are marked as Region 2 but are actually set to work on all regions.)