[X4U] Unlocking DVD for other regions

[Eugene]

On Sat, Oct 13, 2007 at 02:20:11AM CDT, Roy van der Westhuizen <roy at ion.co.za> wrote:
>
> Eugene, the film I am after is only available on/in the NTSC format. So 
> simply put, I want to buy it and play it in South Africa. To the best of my 
> knowledge, we are region 2, not one. Our TV's are PAL. How that affects 
> playing NTSC format I don't know. Possibly I can select 'Region  1' on the 
> machine.

Region codes are an evil abomination created by the film industry
designed to restrict the distribution of DVDs between different
"regions" of the world.  So, for example, a "Harry Potter" DVD
made for the U.S. market will not play in Europe or Asia because
the region code between the U.S. DVD and the non-U.S. DVD player
do not match.

NTSC/PAL/SECAM are analog video formats used around the world.
They differ in the number of scanlines, fields per second,
horizontal/vertical refresh rates, and other stuff.

Region codes have nothing to do with video formats, and vice
versa.  For example, both U.S. and Japanese DVDs are NTSC, but
the former region code is 1 and the latter is 2.  And while the
United Kingdom also belongs to region code 2, they use PAL.

Your most practical solution, as mentioned by other posters,
is to buy one of those Asian DVD players that let you to switch
region codes and also handle different video formats.  A quick
Google search brought up plenty of hits.  Here's one (just an
example, I am not associated with these people at all):

	http://www.dvdoverseas.com/dvd.htm


-- 
Eugene
http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/