I have decided that I want to buy 2 DVDs of Have I Got News For You. However from discussions on this forum, there are DVD regions and sometimes you cannot play a DVD from a different region on your DVD player. I own a standard DVD player and a DVD player is installed on my laptop computer. Can I be able to play the DVDs here or should I not even buy them?

US DVDs are Region 1, and UK DVDs are Region 2. To play the DVDs you're looking to buy, you would need a DVD player capable of playing Region 2 discs, a piece of software that ignores the region code, or a way to modify either your current DVD player or your DVD drive to accept discs from other regions.

This site will tell you if your DVD player will play non-US discs. If it can right out of the box, or it requires just a combination of keys, you're set. If it requires actually modifying the drive, you're probably better off getting a cheap player with multi-region capability; I often see them at discount stores for under $30.

To the tiny minority of our members who use Windows instead of the Mac: are there software players that will ignore the region code? I know that VLC works on the Mac (once the DVD Player app is set so that it doesn't auto-launch) but I wasn't able to get the Windows version to do the same thing.

Oh, surely that's not true. I'd be willing to accept that we have a higher percentage of Mac users than average, but there's no way us backwater Windows users constitute a "tiny minority."

Even this former Apple employee knows that. :-P It was meant as a joke.

Yeah, but the joke's a little played, man.

The answer to your question is yes, I believe, but read this over and see if you get anything useful out of it:

http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/region.html

Am I missing something? You're aware, of course, that a UK DVD would be in the PAL standard, which would *not* be compatible with your "standard DVD player." PAL vs. NTSC (American format) is an issue entirely separate from regions. You must either have a non-regional DVD player that will convert PAL to NTSC, or a non-regional multi-system DVD player hooked up to a multi-system monitor, or, of course, a PAL DVD player connected to a PAL monitor.

I'm able to play PAL DVDs on my Mac computer, because the built-in DVD player has the ability to switch between NTSC and PAL as well as different regions, albeit for only a limited number of times before the settings become permanently frozen.

Yes. He has a laptop.

(This also means that if he wanted to play the DVD on his DVD player, it's very possible (and really not even that difficult) to rip the PAL DVD, reformat it, and burn a DVD that would play on it just fine. Whether the OP is capable of such a thing, however, I leave as an exercise for the reader.)

I thought I was missing something too until I bought my *insert Chinese brand name here* DVD player at Circuit City or Wally World for $30. Most upscale players from your Sony and Samsung companies don't play PAL DVDs at all, but the little cheap $30 players do. I have one hooked into my home theater in addition to my DVD recorder simply because it plays discs I've received in trades from the UK and Australia astonishingly well.

I had an Apex player for awhile, I think it was an 1100...that died during the move, and now I have what I believe is a TruTech or something similar that I got from Target this past Black Friday. Buy one, if it doesn't work for your purpose, take it back and go to the next store. (I've never had problems relating to the regions on these either.)

Well, how old's your telly?

99.9% of Brit TVs bought in the last fifteen years would be able to play from an NTSC source without much of a problem (actually they tend to fudge it into PAL60), surely any reasonably decent US TV would be able to display a PAL picture without too much trouble? Or am I wrong?

Which should be able to handle a PAL DVD, fine, but the OP seemed to think he would be able to play a PAL DVD on his TV setup, which is not likely.

Obviously it's a non-issue to you, but I don't think telling someone, "You can play it on your laptop, but not on your standalone DVD player" is imparting worthless information.

And I'm also concerned about general confusion over standards vs., regions.

My $30 DVD player argument still stands if he wants to play the Region 2 commercially-sold PAL discs:

-Almost all have some backdoor way to hack the firmware to play all regions
-Almost all play PAL discs

On my player, I'm not sure how the conversion is handled to show PAL video on an NTSC TV, but every disc I've ever played looks great. I don't ask questions as long as it works.

The laptop argument is still a fine one too and does not require a separate investment. My MacBook plays my PAL discs perfectly fine. However, I'd rather have the $30 DVD player than tie up the lappy every time I want to dub something off a PAL DVD.

I have no problem playing PAL discs on my NTSC system (using an RCA DVD player set up to be region free)... the framerate may not be exactly right... a little jumpy perhaps... but by no means is it unwatchable.


Greg

Thanks for all the advice. In a tape DVD trade, I learned my standard DVD player will not play certained burned DVDs, but my laptop will play all DVDs. Before I click the "confirm my purchase" button, I wonder if what DVDs my laptop DVD player will play depends on who makes my laptop? I own a Toshiba Satellite that was purchased within the last year.

No, it has nothing whatsoever to do with that.

I checked the website Dzinkin suggested and could not find anything that says my DVD player could only play Region 1 DVDs, and it had no hacks reported.

Also, I was reading the manual for my laptop computer and came up upon this technical note, "Your DVD player is set to play Region 1 discs. If you play a DVD from another region, the drive will automatically change to play in the format of the other region. The drive will allow you to change 4 times and will lock in that region on the fourth change."

Does this mean that I will have to find software to copy DVDs in order to put them into Region 1 playing to prevent my laptop locking into region 2? I also use my laptop to burn DVDs for trades.

One more technical question, when you burn a DVD, is it automatically set to the region in which the DVD burner is made for?

It means that if you want to play the DVDs on your computer, you'll need to play them with something other than the player software that came with your computer -- specifically, something that doesn't trigger the region firmware change -- or use a DVD ripper program that removes the region code as it copies the contents to your hard drive (you can then burn your own copy that won't have a region). There are programs that will modify drives to be "region-free" and play anything, but unless you really know what you're doing (and frankly, even if you do), I'd stay away from them as it's just a little too easy to hose your drive.


DVDs you make yourself don't have a region code (sometimes they're called "Region Zero" even though that doesn't really exist) and will play on anything that can read the disc.

That said, the region-lock is resettable with in Windows simply by uninstalling the drive and then letting Windows find it again on the ensuing reboot. I know Windows makes some veiled threats in the Region tab of the drive properties, but I remember there being a really easy workaround.

(At least, I think that's the case. I don't worry about such things.)