playing US CDs in Paris?
 

Heading to Paris jan31st and we will have an apartment with a CD player. If i bring some music will they play on a european system? Seems like i have heard that it won't work...does anyone know? thanks for the info....lynda

My American CDs play just fine on the CD player at my house in France. It's the DVDs that can be problematic.

The audio CD format is universal (last least on this Earth). No difference anywhere in the world.

thank you,thank you ya''ll...its good to know my 'Paris Cafe cd will work!! lynda

Regular (cda format) CDs should work just fine. MP3 formatted songs may or may not play, depending on the player. But that is true in the US as well.

Some friends burned a bunch of "driving CDs" to take on their last trip to Europe. Their car has an MP3-compatible player, so they were in the habit of burning MP3 CDs. The rental car they had didn't have an MP3-compatible player (no surprise really) and their CDs would not play.

The format of audio CDs is identical throughout the world. You can play any audio CD on any CD player.

DVDs are different. The movie studios insisted on crippling DVDs with a “zone” system. Every DVD player is attached to a zone, and every DVD has a zone encoded on it. The DVD zone must match the player zone, or the player refuses to play the DVD. The U.S. is zone 1; Europe is zone 2. It's not a technical restriction; it's a greed restriction imposed by Hollywood.

Additionally, the output signal from a DVD player will match the format of the video on the DVD, there's still an issue of PAL/NTSC, just as with the old VHS tapes. However, most European television sets today can handle both PAL and NTSC, so it's not much of a problem. PCs with DVD players are even more flexible; they just display whatever is on the DVD.

The situation for VHS tapes requires a player and television set that match the tape format. But nobody watches VHS tapes any more.