Ronda

Can you play a DVD purchased in France on a US DVD player? Thank you.

wombat7

If you have a bog standard DVD player then the answer is probably no - DVDs are marked by region and you cannot play one region DVD in another region DVD player unless you can change the code. US is region 1 and France region 2. I think that you will also have a problem becuase US uses NTSC picture format as opposed to France which I think is PAL

rotaka

You can actually take your DVD player somewhere to have it made ALL Region. They do this kind of thing in electronics stores in Chinatown or you can buy an all region DVD player. They are cheap like $70-100 I believe. HOWEVER SOMETIMES with PAL you can't even view the DVD coz' your TV won't be PAL compatible. France I believe uses another system besides PAL. After all it is France and they have to be different than the rest of Europe. ha

walkinaround

you don't need to take it anywhere. in europe, you can buy a multi-region machine and the store will open it up in the back room and hack it with the remote. the multi-region "option" costs £15-25. check out:

http://www.dvd.reviewer.co.uk/info/multiregion/

look for your machine and do it yourself.

rotaka

My response was for a person living in the US

rkkwan

There are all-region DVD players you can get here that will convert the PAL signal to NTSC output. With a player like that, you can basically play any disc you buy from anywhere on your regular TV.

J62

many DVD players sold in the US can be configured for multi region.

google (dvd multi region code) and you can search if your specific player can be adapted.

AnthonyGA

You need a DVD player that can be set to Zone 2. DVD players are normally set to a specific zone at the factory; for the U.S., the zone setting is always 1.

You can get multizone and zone-free DVD players in Europe, but I don't know if you can find them in the U.S. Additionally, even if you have a player that can handle Zone 2, you need a TV set that can accept PAL instead of NTSC. Here again, this is easy to find in Europe (in fact, it is standard), but difficult to find in the U.S.

Note that there is no technical reason for DVD zones. They were installed because Hollywood insisted on it.

walkinaround

rotaka...my point was that in europe they charge £15-20 (perhaps similar in the US) to do something that you can easily do yourself....where-ever in the world you live.

Gavin

France uses SECAM, unlike the rest of Europe which uses PAL and North America which uses NTSC. I know that it is posible to have video tapes converted from one format to another and don't see why it can't be done with DVD. I am told there is a loss of quality. These sorts of conversions are usully done for home videos as it is not worth while to do for commercial DVDs. You could buy a French DVD player and TV (and a transformer) but that's likely too much bother!

walkinaround

anthony is correct. rkkwan, you are talking about PAL vs. NTSB but that doesn't get you around the region "protections" that hollywood puts on dvds.

i have no idea if PAL dvd players are sold in the US. just hack your machine yourself and see what happens. quick and easy.

rkkwan

I did say "all-region" in my original reply. And yes, one can find an all-region, all-code, PAL/NTSC here in the US. Takes 20 seconds with a google search to find at least a dozen merchants.

[And yes, I have one at home.]

Also, while France uses the SECAM broadcast standard, <b>there is no SECAM DVD</b>. DVD is either PAL or NTSC, and a DVD you pick up in France is most likely PAL.

StCirq

Nope, though there'a way around it that will cost you. My son bought a whole bunch of really inexpensive DVDs in Lyons this past summer which we have not yet been able to view.

Underhill

My husband checked out a few web sites and got all the information he needed to convert our DVD player into a multi-regional one. It's great to be able to buy DVDs from the U.K. that just aren't available here, like the Tenko series.

But it doesn't work for French discs.

logos999

&gt;Also, while France uses the SECAM broadcast standard
They did this years ago but moved to digital (DVB), mpeg2 and mpeg4 formats, PAL encoded. Don't know if there are still terrestrial SECAM transmitters left. On 8W there may be one or two secam encoded analog services left. The beauty of all this. The french &quot;pertitel&quot; socket you'll find on any TV allows you to bypass any color encoding. (No PAL, SECAM, NTSC or whatever) All that matters is timing.

AnthonyGA

SECAM is used in France for over-the-air broadcasts. It has never been used for DVDs or other recent video formats, although it was used long ago for some VHS cassettes. Essentially the prevalence of PAL has pushed SECAM into history for every form of video except broadcast, and even that will probably disappear eventually.

In Europe, Greece, Poland, and Russia apparently use SECAM as well for broadcast, but I don't know if anything has recently changed.

logos999

&gt;SECAM is used in France for over-the-air broadcasts.
A few leftover stations in France and stations in Russia.

Alec

If you have a bog-standard DVD player in the US, whether Region 1 or multi-region, I'm almost certain it will not play European DVD encoded in PAL (all French DVDs are in PAL). You have basically two choices here - either to buy a NTSC-to-PAL encoder that sits between your DVD player and your TV, or to get a DVD player with that facility built in. There is a third solution - get a multi-standard TV, which is pretty common in Europe but rare in US.

logos999

All chinese DVD players can be switched between PAL and NTSC. They use exactly the same hardware for their machines sold all over the planet, just the plugs and cables differ. Read the manual. Some machines may have PAL disabled unless you do a firmware update.

logos999

Shinco is one company which sell the SAME products under a zillion of different names in the US and Europe.