NTSC & PAL on Computers

[Tony Laubach]

Hey gang,

Another techie question; I hear PAL formatted DVDs will play on just about any computer/laptop equipped with a DVD-ROM drive... there's a show I wish to get on DVD which is unfortunately on available in PAL-Region 2 coding. It is not, nor have I heard of any plans, to release this in the states with NTSC, thus my only choice is to get the PAL version or suck it up and wait with hope it eventually comes out.

So the question; can I play Region 2 PAL disks on a standard computer DVD-ROM?

Thanks!

 

[Joey Ketcham]

You should be able to.

I have a couple movies in PAL format that plays fine on my computer, I've never had a problem with playing PAL format on my computer or laptop.

 

[Eric Flescher]

pal

Pal videos, as I know it, you need a pal oriented video.
As for DVD, I know you can create DVD with pal format.
As for showing them on you computer, I was not sure .
Interesting info although I don't have pal dvds.

:::

You should be able to.

I have a couple movies in PAL format that plays fine on my computer, I've never had a problem with playing PAL format on my computer or laptop.

 

[John Diel]

Just make sure your software player is rated for PAL formatting. You shouldn't have any trouble as most players do both NTSC and PAL.

If your trying to play to a stand alone DVD player and DVD, you'll have trouble though and most US DVD players are region locked and almost all are NTSC formatted.

With a little bit of work, you can convert PAL to NTSC video. I've done this a couple of times for various projects using short clips. It works out pretty well. TMPGE will help in this and there's other conversion software out there as well.

 

[John Erwin]

The PAL aspect is not as much of a problem as the region coding is. DVD drives sold in North America will have Region 1 set as default; you can usually change this with software up to 5 times to other regions before the Region becomes permanent. You may be able to make some drives Region-Free using utilities out there; usual cautions apply. Please note this applies equally to Macs and PC's by the way.

The PAL issue isn't really an issue at all; once you have the Region code set you can easilly watch PAL video and with other software available out there convert it to NTSC format for other players etc.