"kaboom" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 19 May 2005 00:05:43 -0700, "Ron Hubbard"
wrote:

I know somebody in the UK who has some Doctor Who episodes on DVD--
probably made on an incompatible region 2 DVD player. But even if
they
were either region 0 or region 1 discs, would they still be
incompatible
because of the PAL/NTSC differences?

**Hi Ron. Yes, they would be incompatible but: If you're looking for
the new Doctor Who episodes, go to alt.video.tape-trading and you'll
probably find someone in Canada who has them. Or even if you're
looking for any Doctor Who

Those burnt discs are probably in PAL. There are several cheapish DVD
players here in the US that can be region hacked with the remote and
can also convert PAL to NTSC on the fly. Two of them that I can think
of offhand are the Philips 642 and the Magnavox 458/17. I bought both
of them onsale, the Philips was $56 and the Magnavox $35.

The Magnavox will convert uncoded PAL DVDs to NTSC right out of the
box. However, it favors DVD+R. It will play -R but with a very slight
occasional, barely noticeable stutter. With a few button presses on
the remote, you can change the region to zero. I played a Swedish
commercial disc (region: 0) on it and it converted beautifully. It
looked and sounded fantastic.

The Philips has a rep of being able to plow through many types of
video, however, I haven't experimented with mine yet so I can't really
comment. According to what I've read, you can also change the region
with the remote.

Here's a site with a list of DVD players and their hack-ability:

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.php

Thanks, for the info; it's much appreciated!

Ron