Will a PAL DVD work in NTSC region free players?

[Antoneo]

I was just wondering if I get a PAL DVD, will it work properly on a region free player or say on the DVD drive of a computer? I understand there is a difference in fps... is there an internal conversion done by the player to make this possible if at all?

 

[Matthias99]

It should work in a computer. I'm not sure how a set-top region-free player would handle it, but I suspect it won't work well (at least with an older DVD player). Newer players are pretty flexible, though... PAL can't be much more complex than WMV and DivX support...

 

[calyco]

It will definitely work on a computer. For stand alone players try the Philips DVP642, its been getting great reviews. Another thing you have to look at is OAR (original aspect ratio). I have a Apex player (which I dont recommend) that displays widescreen PAL discs as fullscreen and who the hell watches dvds in fullscreen 😛 Keep that in mind if you are looking for a new player.

 

[kornphlake]

A Pal input on certain NTSC displays will appear as black and white rather than color. At least that's my experience as we manufacture cameras and displays in both PAL and NTSC. Some monitors are switchable and will show color no matter what signal you are inputing, other monitors will show only black and white if the wrong input signal is present. I'm referring to TV monitors only, computer monitors are probablly a different story.

 

[calyco]

kornphlake - I have heard the same thing and that it only happens on TVs 5 years or older. Personally I have tried it on many televisions for example Sony Wegas and Philips(bought 8 years ago) etc. and have never had a problem with the conversion.

 

[wseyller]

On a computer yes it will work as computer monitors can support multiple resolutions and fps. If your tv or dvd player does not support pal then it will not work.

Differences in Pal and NTSC

Pal (Europe & Japan)
720 x 576 pixels MPEG2
25 fps


NTSC (North America)
720 x 480 pixels MPEG2
29,97 fps

WMV and Dixv it nothing like MPEG2 Encoding which have a resolution of 640x480 and is MPEG4 encoding.


Video bitrate of DVD MPEG2 encoding is ~5000kbps and WMV and Dixv have a bitrate of ~1000kbps.

 

[Slick5150]

There are a number of standalone DVD players that can do PAL->NTSC conversion so it will display on your NTSC TV (some do it better than others). So yes, it is possible but depends on your player.

 

[uOpt]

Careful.

A cheapo standalone DVD player such as the Cyberhome unit sold for $35 by bestbuy in summer will play all regions.

However, it will have a slightly jerky pictures during some seqquences when playing a PAL DVD on an NTSC TV. This is due to the different images/second. The cheap players handle that badly and you can see non-smooth sequences every few seconds, in sequences like smooth camera sweeps. It is not a big problem but noticable. if you play NTSC DVDs in such a player on a PAL TV no such effect is visble (to me).

Note that region1 doesn't have to be NTSC and region2 doesn't have to be PAL. Although they of course usually are these are two different technical concepts.

 

[kornphlake]

We get cheap TV monitors from Korea that are PAL or NTSC specific and won't display the other properly. It really depends on if the monitor has a switching control board. I'm not an EE but from what I understand, there's something about the frequency range of the color signal that is different for PAL than it is for NTSC, if the control board can't decode the freqency it'll default to B&W. A switchable control board will automatically adjust to whatever frequency range the input signal is. It's likely that modern consumer level monitors will have a switchable control board and won't have a problem with either PAL or NTSC. If however you've got a cheap monitor that came with some piece of equipment as an OEM item it may not be switchable. I don't think that there's necessarily a 5 year rule.