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Scotty

STORY: Wednesday April 27, 2016

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I know that it's officially illegal to view any video that the copyright holders have decided is not profitable to release in one's country/region, but that's not what I was asking. I was asking if it is possible to play a UK or Europe region DVD (or Blu-Ray) on one of its native players, but is connected to a US-region television set. I want to know if it's possible to just pop in the disk and go, without having to deal with file management or conversions or any hardware outside of the DVD player and television.

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17 minutes ago, ijuin said:

I know that it's officially illegal to view any video that the copyright holders have decided is not profitable to release in one's country/region, but that's not what I was asking. I was asking if it is possible to play a UK or Europe region DVD (or Blu-Ray) on one of its native players, but is connected to a US-region television set. I want to know if it's possible to just pop in the disk and go, without having to deal with file management or conversions or any hardware outside of the DVD player and television.

I've done it two ways.  First, I have a little 7" portable DVD player which turned out to be able to play both Region 1 and Region 2.  It also has a dock for my video iPod, something I haven't seen before or since (and the fact that it's a "video iPod" probably narrows down the dates....).  Second, there are some DVD players which block other regions at a software level, rather than hardware, so if you can find the right button combinatin online, you can unlock them.  When I've seen videos played on NTSC TVs that way, the picture sometimes looks a little off, but by no means bad enough to be a problem, and sometimes it's perfect.

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Ok, thank you. I mainly wanted to know if there was an incompatibility between ATSC televisions (ATSC is the HDTV format that replaced NTSC when the USA went to digital broadcasting) and disks made for PAL (or whatever the digital format that replaced PAL is). I am prepared to buy a UK-region DVD player, but I wanted to know if it would be useless without being connected to a UK-region television.

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7 hours ago, ijuin said:

Ok, thank you. I mainly wanted to know if there was an incompatibility between ATSC televisions (ATSC is the HDTV format that replaced NTSC when the USA went to digital broadcasting) and disks made for PAL (or whatever the digital format that replaced PAL is). I am prepared to buy a UK-region DVD player, but I wanted to know if it would be useless without being connected to a UK-region television.

Found it. The digital format that replaced PAL is DVB-T.

The difference between DVB-T and ATSC on one side and NTSC and PAL on other is that the antennae cable is only one you will find DVB-T and presumably ATSC in. Analog video recorders and players actually encoded it's output into antennae cable, although even them had alternatives like SCART and composite. Digital devices like modern DVD players and set-top boxes don't bother: their output is usually available either in analog way on SCART, or digitally on HDMI (there are also other, less common options).

To conclude: you don't need to wonder if the DVD recorder is capable of NTSC and/or ATSC output. I'm not entirely sure about SCART, but the HDMI standard is independent on where the original signal was obtained from: if both DVD recorder and the TV know HDMI, they will be able to communicate.

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Well yes, but I mean is the ATSC television set going to be unable to understand (i.e. convert into a usable video output) the output of a player made for DVB-T due to file format crap? Do I need specialized software (or a special DVB-T reader), or are they going to have a mismatch?

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1 hour ago, ijuin said:

Well yes, but I mean is the ATSC television set going to be unable to understand (i.e. convert into a usable video output) the output of a player made for DVB-T due to file format crap? Do I need specialized software (or a special DVB-T reader), or are they going to have a mismatch?

The player is NOT made for DVB-T. It MIGHT also have a DVB-T tuner (that's the name for device for receiving DVB-T) but only if it's recorder and it can record from DVB-T. The output of the player is NOT DVB-T. It's HDMI. (Or RGB on SCART). Also, DVB-T is not file format.

In analog mode, you MIGHT have problem with output being 25fps (but you likely wouldn't, devices that stupid would be very old now). In digital mode, this is not issue: HDMI is capable of 60fps, if the TV supports it, it MUST be able to understand more than one fps rate.

(Note: personally, I would look at model of your TV and model of the player you plan to buy and check Internet for possible problems, just to be sure. But you need to know what to look for ; asking about DVB-T and ATSC is unlikely to get you anywhere, as neither has anything to do with playing DVDs. The fps might be worth searching for. NTSC had 30fps and 29.97 fps may still be used, also for some reason 23.976 ; PAL had 25fps. Also, you should definitely check what connectors your TV has.)

EDIT: Checked few DVDs. All are certainly European, but one had 29.97 fps anyway. I suspect European devices supports both. Of course, I can't confirm if US ones do as well.

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The main incompatibility between NTSC and PAL was not frames per second, it was the shape of the screen.  One had more lines per frame than the other, and I think they had a different number of pixels width, too.  That's what made for wonky pictures.  To show one type of image on the other type of screen, you had to compress or stretch to make to one match the other.

Do you know whether both regions now use the same size and shape screen?  I'm betting they do, but that would be the main source of concern.

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Ok, again, my main concern was that my ATSC television would see the signal and decide "hey, this is not a signal format that I understand".

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11 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

The main incompatibility between NTSC and PAL was not frames per second, it was the shape of the screen.  One had more lines per frame than the other, and I think they had a different number of pixels width, too.  That's what made for wonky pictures.  To show one type of image on the other type of screen, you had to compress or stretch to make to one match the other.

Do you know whether both regions now use the same size and shape screen?  I'm betting they do, but that would be the main source of concern.

NTSC uses 483 visible and 525 total scan lines. PAL uses 576 visible and 625 total scan lines. Pixes? On cathode ray tube based TV? Those are ANALOG standards, the line was simply from left to right. But ok, later 704 visible, 720 total pixels was used for both, meaning the screen shape is different. Still, aren't most DVD's wide-screen anyway?

1 hour ago, ijuin said:

Ok, again, my main concern was that my ATSC television would see the signal and decide "hey, this is not a signal format that I understand".

The signal over HDMI cable will be HDMI. If the television is not able to understand ANY valid HDMI signal, then it's not compatible with HDMI.

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