DVD formats in foreign countries?

[Russ Smith]

Well it appears that buying DVD's in the US to bring over to Australia is a lot harder than it seems. US is region 1, Australia region 4, US NTSC, Australia PAL. So unless my girlfriend's uncle has a player that supports all regions, and both NTSC and PAL, DVD's we buy here won't work there.

Anybody know anything about this? they've asked us to bring over some NBA highlight DVD's (they apparently get very little NBA down under) and high school musical, pussycat dolls etc for their daughter. So far I'm finding that most of the sites that sell DVD's online from Australia are backordered for HS Musical, and if they have it, very expensive with shipping, would be cheaper to order it and have it shipped direct to them.

Is it legal to buy a DVD like HS musical and have someone convert it to a different format? I know you can do that with home movies but not commercially bought ones.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

They will need to have a region player like you stated. It isn't illegal to convert it, just like it isn't illegal to make a backup of it. Your girlfriend's uncle couldn't buy it, and then convert it, and then give it to you. That would techincally be illegal, but nearly impossible to prove.

 

[Russ Smith]

They will need to have a region player like you stated. It isn't illegal to convert it, just like it isn't illegal to make a backup of it. Your girlfriend's uncle couldn't buy it, and then convert it, and then give it to you. That would techincally be illegal, but nearly impossible to prove.

Can I buy it locally and have it converted to Pal format and region 4?

Our intent was to bring them with us, I've been told some players support all regions but that won't solve the NTSC/PAL issue so we may have to buy a DVD and send it over there ahead of time to see if it works.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

Can I buy it locally and have it converted to Pal format and region 4?

Our intent was to bring them with us, I've been told some players support all regions but that won't solve the NTSC/PAL issue so we may have to buy a DVD and send it over there ahead of time to see if it works.

There is probably some place to convert it. Why not buy a region free player? Cheap players like Apex and Cyberhome have been known to be region free players with PAL/NTSC conversion.

 

[AZZenny]

I've been looking into this myself -- most computer DVD players will handle either format, BUT only one at a time, and you have to switch back and forth -- and you are only allowed to do that 5 times before it locks forever. If you have two DVD players on computer(s) you can set one to US and one to the foreign region -- there are no internal DVD drives made region free, although there are places that convert them. I looked into that, too, and it sounds a bit creepy and uncertain.

A decent truly region-free player is going to cost you more than a regular player -- there are websites devoted entirely to region-free players and ratings. One issue is that unless the player includes certain OTHER 'translation' aspects, the colors on the TV may not work right -- that's why you need to be careful about cheap region-frees, apparently.