William Sommerwerck wrote:
This raises a question that I've long wanted an answer to... If disks vary
according to frame rate -- how can there be a zone-free recording?

Because all players play all three frame rate disks. Zones refer only
to encryption. If a disk is not encrypted, then it can be played on any
DVD player. Home DVDs are not encrypted, in fact, I have never seen
DVD encryption software for home users, but it may exist.

Commerical DVDs are encrypted if the producer wants to use it. There may
be a licensing fee for involved. All licensed players are required to
check the zone bits (1-8) before decrypting a DVD to make sure the
player's zone is allowed by they DVD.

If you wish to produce a zone-free recording, you can leave it unencrypted
or encrypt it with more than one zone allowed. Israel is in zone 2, I
usually see zone 1 or 2 only disks for sale here, occasionaly I see disks
for zone 2 and 4, 2 and 6, or 2, 4 and 6.

The following web page discusses the permitted resolutions and frame rates
allowed by DVDs:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en...t-vcd-dvd.html

Note that I have found you can mix some of the video and audio encoding
options in ways that are not permitted and they still work. Surprisingly
doing so produced a DVD that could be played on everything I tried including
several hard and soft players EXCEPT Windows Media Player.

Geoff.



--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM