WHAT'S IN A DVD?

A word about DVD players:

Most DVD players in the world are designed to play one kind of DVD - the DVD's made for that particular country. If you live in the U.S. and buy a DVD player from your local store, it will more than likely only play DVD's made for the U.S. It will NOT play a DVD that was made to play on a European, or a Russian DVD player.  We will explain what and why those differences exist in this article.

The only exception for this is if you spend a little extra money and buy a "region-free" DVD player that will play all region DVD's. I live in a fairly large town and could not find a single seller in my city that sold region-free DVD players, which tells me if you want one, you will probably have to special-order one, and the price will be higher than you will normally pay for a player.

DVD's come in many different configurations. The configurations are primarily built to satisfy a country's adopted regulations or requirements for television, as well as to protect the movie manufacturer in making it more difficult for people to make illegal copies.

When DVD manufacturers produce a DVD, they create it with 2 different formatting requirements. We want to briefly explain to you what these formats are, as if you buy a DVD that is not made for your particular DVD player, it will not work. It also helps you determine if you are buying "the real thing" or a "fake" DVD off of eBay!

NTSC or PAL

All DVD's come printed in one of 2 formats on how the information is transmitted to your TV - these are either the NTSC, or PAL formats.

U.S. and Japanese DVD players primarily use the NTSC format, and Europe and most of the rest of the world's DVD players may use PAL or NTSC format.

If you have an NTSC DVD player (if you bought a DVD player in the U.S. it most likely is NTSC), you would be required to have an NTSC to PAL converter for your DVD to play properly on your TV to play a PAL-formatted DVD (which also converts the information BACK to NTSC to show properly on your NTSC TV!)

This means that if you have an NTSC DVD player, when buying online, you want to make sure the DVD you are buying is in NTSC format, or it won't play right, if at all, on your TV, or if you are in a country which uses PAL format, you want to make sure you are buying a DVD in PAL format.

Most U.S.-released DVD's, and by most I mean over 95%, are in NTSC-only format. If they release a PAL-formatted DVD, it will be released in a foreign country, NOT in the United States and not sold in any U.S. retail stores. In today's global online marketplace however, you need to be careful you are buying the right formatted DVD!

So what is NTSC and PAL?

NTSC

NTSC stands for National Television System Committee, which was a committee who regulated the format for U.S. television broadcasting formats back in 1953. An NTSC format displays 545 lines of information on your screen horizontally, and it does so by displaying first the even lines, then the odd lines. These two sets of lines are called fields, and the fields are displayed at 59.94 lines per second. The odd and even lines together interlock to create a "frame", and the frames are displayed at 30 frames per second, giving us full motion video.

PAL

PAL stands for Phase Alternating by Line. It is a diferent-styled format developed in 1967 and adopted by most of Europe , Australia, central and southern America, and many other countries around the world. Instead of 545 lines of information displayed on the screen, there are 645 lines, and they are displayed vertically instead of horizontally. It displays 50 fields or 25 frames per second. This format allows a sharper and truer tint on the screen.

Now you can see why an NTSC-formatted DVD player would have a problem playing a PAL-formatted DVD, or vice-versa.

REGION CODES

Above is a map of the world which shows how the DVD manufacturers have divided up the world  geographically for the DVD that they are producing. They do this primarily for copyright protection, but also they keep in mind the formatting that those countries require - for instance, if a DVD manufacturer was printing a DVD for release in Russia, which as you see by the map is region 5, they would need to print the DVD in PAL format and coded for region 5 for those DVD players to be able to play the DVD. Official released DVD's will have no problem playing on the appropriate country's DVD players.

COMPUTER DVD PLAYERS: A Computer is a little smarter, in the sense that it may be able to properly convert a different region-encoded DVD on your computer, however there have been lock-outs created for them where if you do it too many times the DVD player simply will not work anymore. This is a copyright protect. 

Here is a breakdown and description of the different regions -

(Remember, your DVD player will only work for ONE region, unless you have specifically purchased a region-free DVD player)

Region 1: United States and U.S. Territories and Canada - Any DVD player made to sell in  these countries can play region 1-encoded DVD's. They are also NTSC-formatted only.

Region 2: Western Europe, South Africa, Japan, Middle East - DVD's made for this region could be in PAL or NTSC format, so know which one you need!

Region 3: East Asia, Southeast Asia - DVD's made for this region could be in PAL or NTSC format, so know which one you need!

Region 4: Australia, Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, South America - DVD's made for this region could be in PAL or NTSC format, so know which one you need!

Region 5: Africa, Eastern Europe, India, Mongolia, North Korea,  Russia - DVD's made for this region could be in PAL or NTSC format, so know which one you need!

Region 6: China - DVD's made for this region could be in PAL or NTSC format, so know which one you need!

Region 0: ALL REGIONS - DVD's made region 0 will play in any region in the world. You will still need to see if it is in PAL or NTSC format. WARNING: MOST DVD manufacturers do NOT release official DVD's region 0. They release it for a specific market. For instance, official Star Trek DVD's have ONLY been officially released by Paramount for regions 1 and 2. A good indication that star trek DVD's are fake are if a seller says they will work in all regions! There ARE exceptions however. Little House on the Prairie officially released for regions 1-6. Some work-out videos and documentary-type DVD's are released region 0. They exist, but it is NOT the norm.

MOST region 0 or "all region" DVD's are ILLEGAL BOOTLEGS. BE CAREFUL if buying a region 0 DVD, especially if it is an expensive "multi-season" TV set. We know of NO multi-season DVD set released by a manufacturer region 0!