Can anyone tell me why I can't play region 2 DVD's on my player - it says "playback restricted" on the player, and "Not PAL" on the TV.

Both DVD player and TV have been bought new within the last 6 months.

What's going on?

Assuming both the Televison and DVD player have been purchased within the UK and the DVD player is a region 2 machine, I would advise you to check the following:

1) check the DVD in question is definately region 2.

2) check if the DVD in question is either NTSC or PAL. If you purchased it from a high street retailer it is should be PAL. If it's from say India (Bollywood) it will be NTSC.

Give us more info, (hope that helps)...

Also give the model & make of your DVD player. As I can find out the how to make your player region-free, although there are some models that I won't be able to do this as they are hardware protected.

But hey, it doesn't hurt to try!

Yes! Actually the DVD was NTSC - I bought it from HMV on Oxford street - 'Sex in the City'

Can I get my system to play NTSC DVD's, maybe by gettingit chipped?

The DVD player is a Toshiba - i'll check the model when i get home

Cheers
Donut

Even if you manage to get the player 'chipped' for multi-region, the fact that NTSC requires that your television can handle this type of signal means that you will either get a black & white picture or no picture at all!!!

Help is at hand though!!! You can purchase a converter (NTSC-PAL) which will do if your tele can handle the signal. They normally cost around £70???. I've got a spare one at home (upgraded my tele), perhaps we can come to a deal???

MarkBear: I have a toshiba SD-K320 (imported), it is chipped, but do you have any additional info regarding RCE???

Pyara, I'm afraid if it's chipped I don't have any software codes for you to make it region-free. (Is [COLOR=blue]RCE[/COLOR] to do with region-free?)

May I suggest that you go to following web sites and have a look around, or even get in touch with them:

DVD Chips
DVD Mods
Both of the above sites are British services.

Cheers.

RCE stands for region coded enhanced. These dvd discs can cause a problem because they can only be used in the region it was designed for or on manually switched multi-region dvd players. I think they may be ways of getting around it but it depends on the type of dvd player, no doubt, someone else will be able to tell us a lot more about RCE.

for DVD queries i would go over to www.thedvdforums.com

RCE is basically a system which was introduced by Warner last year on it's Region 1 discs to stop us with multiregion or regionfree players from playing discs before they are released officially and it is basically to do with how the disc checks the region settings of the player

of late it has mainly been Columbia Tristar who have been using RCE on most of it's major US releases (such as Charlie's Angels, The 6th Day) - although Columbia seem to be making an effort to make the R2 versions of RCE discs (and most others) as good as the R1 so there is less reason to import (apart from getting them earlier - both the discs above are out here anyway and as good as R1 - The 6th Day is actually better)

as far as i am aware, most multiregion players are fine with RCE - if you switch Regions manually you should definitely be ok with RCE titles, if you only have a mod which automatically switches region you may have a problem depending on your machine and what make of modification it has (i have a Sony 725 with auto-switch only Tridek mod and it is fine, but other makes of mod which are auto-only do not work)

unfortunately Pyara, i think Toshiba machines with auto-only switching were some of the worst affected by RCE, although most recent auto-mods are now RCE compatible (and most mods now have both an auto-switch and manual region switching option)

the sure way of checking if your machine is RCE compatible is to check it with an RCE disc - the only other titles i can remember having RCE are Hollow Man, The Patriot and Thomas and The Magic Railroad (really!) - but if you look on a R1 DVD retail site they usually state which discs are RCE encoded (although some sites sometimes tend put it on all Warner/Columbia discs as a precaution)

however, if you are affected there are usually ways around the encoding, eg. directly accessing titles/chapters by keying them in rather than using menus (check out the link above for such info)

Thanks for that info rezabelady, I knew someone would be able to supply a lot more info.

Pyara, I have just been over to www.play247.com and noticed a new dvdfaq heading on its front page. If you go there, there is some more info on RCE plus players that are known not to have any problems with RCE discs. There is also a wealth of info on dvds in general, quite interesting reading.

Wicket

Cheers for that info... I have read-up on the bypass method, it appears to work on a few disks only!!!

Donut, Most DVD players will play NTSC and PAL, whatever region they are. However, it looks like your TV may be incompatible. The only way to get around this is to get a new tv!!

Actually my friend if this dudes tele can handle an NTSC signal by displaying a pure black & white stable picture he can use a converter (as already mentioned) this is what I used to do before I upgraded the set.

However, if the picture is not stable or you cannot see anything at all then this option will not work. Apparantly he has a message displayed onscreen, perhaps you may need the switch the DVD player into NTSC or AUTO mode in the display/video settings?

I would advise a quick go read of the manual!!!

Why don't you just take it back to HMV, they are at fault here. They shouldn't be selling NTSC disks.

That could be a viable solution, I cannot understand why they were selling NTSC DVD's. I'm sure that title is available in PAL???? I think that's showing on SKY ONE as well??

OK OK!

I did take it back!

What I cant belive is that the TV I bought not two months ago (28 inch Sony Wega Widescreen) won't play PAL DVD's!

What is the world coming to?

Your a right Donut aren't you. Your tele does play PAL, it doesn't play NTSC. To be honest with you, if your getting an onscreen message being generated from the DVD player it's got nothing to do with the tele.

As before, check your manuals. You made need to alter the DVD player settings???

no - they cannot sell imported films/DVDs which do not have a BBFC certificate

some DVD producers have recently been releasing US television programs on Region 2 DVD in their original NTSC format rather than the PAL conversion (ones i have heard of are The 10th Kingdom and Sex in the City - i think some wrestling titles are also NTSC) - i'm not 100% sure why this is but it may be because the producers wish to sell the same Region 2 discs in both Europe and Japan (who are also R2) but as Japan use NTSC and very few of their televisions will accept PAL at all (whereas most european TVs will accept NTSC) they opt just to produce a single NTSC print

i didn't really read the thread particularly closely before but i think that your DVD player itself is not capable of playing back NTSC discs - i would be very surprised if a brand new Sony WEGA couldn't handle it

All European Region 2 spec DVD players are required to play PAL and NTSC, and any TV bought in the last three or four years really should too (my 3 year old 4:3 Sony Trinitron does no problem, so a new WEGA should).

As for why they are releasing NTSC DVDs in the UK, this is a more difficult question. If the series was originally shot on video at NTSC resolution (which given the US is converting over to high-def TV slowly but surely, and most TV series are shot on film not video anyway, is fairly unlikely), then it would probably look better encoded as NTSC than re-encoding it as PAL, as you'd have to interpolate the fields in a very uneven way to get the correct number of lines.

However, like I say, most TV series are shot high-def or on film nowadays, both stateside and here, and it's probably just cheapness on the part of the producers of the DVD not wanting to burn a new master. Tut tut!

Mark

...Actually, reading again what you have said there, it sounds as though you may actually have a region one disc - if the player is saying playback restricted (which it should never do due to it being the wrong TV format), then it must be a region issue.

Perhaps someone at the DVD producers messed up and just popped the region one DVD in the region two case maybe?

Try another copy?

Mark