Region 2 DVD in Region 1

[Tjalfe]

My mom got a few DVD's send over from Denmark a while back. She is now asking me to find a way to watch them on her DVD player.. these are Region protected and I assume PAL encoded. Is there anything I can do to play these in Canada ( region 1 NTSC) ?
I have a DVD burner at my disposal, but I am not sure what I can do to change region code and the PAL encoding. Also the disk is dual layer 5.7GB worth of stuff

.. also why in the world are they region protecting Danish material, which will never be watched by anyone besides Danish people???

[High_Jumbllama]

Some players have hidden menus to enable playing of DVDs from other regions. On computers, this is possible with minor software/firmware hacks/plinks. As for viewing PAL on NTSC I am not sure. I had the Amiga game Galaga and it worked, but the bottom portion of the movie was cut off. Maybe the DVD player will have an option for this as well.

The region protect because they can. Primarilly it is for price fixing but in this case, the reason eludes me.

[Rob(QG)]

What model of DVD player does she have?
I'd be surprised if the DVD player and telly couldn't handle PAL, as most kit in the UK now handles PAL, PAL 60 and/or NTSC, and SECAM.

This site might be able to help find any region free hacks: http://www.dvdrhelp.com/

[TransformX]

Convert it to SVCD...

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Rob(QG)
What model of DVD player does she have?
I'd be surprised if the DVD player and telly couldn't handle PAL, as most kit in the UK now handles PAL, PAL 60 and/or NTSC, and SECAM.

This site might be able to help find any region free hacks: http://www.dvdrhelp.com/

Most North American TVs handle NTSC and NTSC only.

[Rob(QG)]

That's a bit annoying

And I spose that DVD players won't output 50i FPS PAL signal as 50i FPS NTSC? I would think the telly could handle it as it isn't too far out of spec (from ~48i FPS NTSC), considering my old telly could handle 60 FPS PAL.

[paulcs]

It is possible to get an all-region player in North America (particularly online), but not as easy as it is in Region 2. Region-locking was implemented to continue the price gouging in Region 2. Therefore, there was more demand for multi-region and region free players in Europe (and probably Japan, where the price gouging was particularly acute).

Region 2, of course, encompasses both Europe and Japan. Back in the Laser Disk days, it was often cheaper to order LD's from North American companies and have them shipped to Japan. (Even when taking into account the shipping charges and import tariffs.) Manufacturers and distributors hated that, and Region-locking was implemented to stop the practice. It didn't work, of course. It seems everyone in the UK has a region-free player or has applied some sort of hack.

Although region-locking wasn't really aimed at the US or Canada, a relatively small minority of people have been effected: anime fans, Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, collectors, and people like your mom who get DVDs from Region 2 for one reason or another. Again, because the demand is so small, getting a region-free player is a little trickier. You can try your local DVD repair shop. They might know how to do remove the region lock. There are hacks available for some players as well.

As TransformX mentioned, ripping the thing, re-encoding it as an SVCD, and burning it on a CD is also a possibility.

PAL is not an issue with most new players.

Paul

[Gurm]

Or you can use your burner and rip/reencode the movie and then burn it, losing the menus in the process...

- Gurm

P.S. A great place to get information about this sort of thing is:

http://www.dvdrhelp.com

I'm in the forums there, as are a couple other MURCers.

[TnT]

I thought another reason for regions was for the marketing. Since they didn't release DVDs over the world at the same time, they wanted to prevent people from buying them early overseas.

My favorite story is that NASA put a region free DVD player on the ISS, for obvious reasons, and they got in trouble.

[Sasq]

Yes, for example Shrek was released on DVD in western speaking countries more or less the same week it finially hit the movie cinima here.

[Nuno]

I have a DVD burner at my disposal, but I am not sure what I can do to change region code and the PAL encoding. Also the disk is dual layer 5.7GB worth of stuff

Use DVDShrink to compress menus and extras and rip off non-necessary audio tracks and subtitles and you should easily fit it on a 4.3Gb DVD-R. In the process, make it region free

[UtwigMU]

Well, if your mother can watch it on PC, you can flash a drive fairly easy.

both of drives in house are region free.

If you need a fix for Liteon which is no longer available PM me.

[K6-III]

There are some links for the Liteon region-free util at www.firmware-flash.com

[UtwigMU]

Yes but it was taken off.

I googled the "exe + download" up on some chinese site.

[Tjalfe]

I asked my mom what player she has, she just told me it was a JVC one. she has a small computer screen, at least compared to their tv, so she was hoping for a way to make it work on the TV. is there a software way I can redo the DVD and burn it to a DVD-R, with north american settings instead?