Any DVD People out there?

[Upinthe]

Does anyone know anything about DVDs and how they work on computers?

I recently purchased a DVD that is in the PAL format and has no region restriction (Or so it says on the back of the package.) in hopes that I would be able to play it on the DVD drive on my computer. It won't even load up when I stick it in the drive. I would have thought that at least some kind of error message or something would display if it wasn't going to work, but nothing happens. A normal region 1 NTSC disc works just fine. Is there anything I can do to make this work? If not, does anyone know of a good kind of DVD drive to get that would play this? Any suggestions or info is welcome and appreciated.

[jpmeyer]

If you're planning on playing it on your computer, take note of what model DVD-ROM you have and what software you're using and look online for a crack to remove region encoding and display coding.

[TheFram]

From what i know, it is not that simple. You will probably also need a new codec because PAL video is different from NTSC in a few ways, including frame rate. The media lab at my school has some software that lets the Macs play PAL, but usually they just use a regionless PAL dvd player that they have on one of the racks and feed the video into the computer off the PAL player.

[Bram]

It's not a problem. I hacked the region selector on my set-top dvd player so I can import region 1 dvds (holland is region 2). There are differences in frame rates and number of lines between the PAL and NTSC standards, yes, but if you do it right, you still get to play both formats. Additionally, most GOOD TV's support either systems (this is not to say your player will play them regardless, just that it the screen can work equally well with NTSC and PAL data).

There's numerous software hacks for DVD-ROM players available, depending on what model drive you have. Just google for 'DVD region selector patch / hack' or something.