Help! Uk Dvd

[MissSixty]

My DS is a huge fan of the british children's show "Fireman Sam". I purchased the DVD box set from Amazon.com UK. What I did not know was that these DVD's are NOT compatible with my DVD player, I had no idea there was a difference between US and UK DVD's.
Does anyone know if there is any way I will be able to view these? My DS is heartbroken, he has been waiting on pins and needles for these to arrive!

 

[Hobbes]

Can you play them on your computer? Or do you have a Play station-I know some games consoles can play your DVDs over here so I guess it would work the opposite way round

 

[dlpSteve]

I take it you are in the US?

UK DVDs are Region 2 and US DVDs are Region 1 so unless you have a multi-region DVD player or have used a hack (either a hardwire or remote control code) ion your DVD player than they won't play.

The next problem you would face is the TV system which is PAL format in the UK and NTSC format in the US. Most modern TVs can handle both but you may find a problem with playback on your TV even if the DVD player accepts the disc. Often in the UK NTSC discs/videos will be black and white on older or cheaper PAL televsion sets.

Most DVD players do have a remote control hack which allows you to make your machine multi-region.

 

[Boudica]

My DS is a huge fan of the british children's show "Fireman Sam". I purchased the DVD box set from Amazon.com UK. What I did not know was that these DVD's are NOT compatible with my DVD player, I had no idea there was a difference between US and UK DVD's.
Does anyone know if there is any way I will be able to view these? My DS is heartbroken, he has been waiting on pins and needles for these to arrive!

What is the make and model of your DVD player? You may be able to do a "remote control" hack and make it multi-region.

Failing that, you could download DVD Shrink to back up your discs and make them region free.

 

[islandmum]

go to Google, type in your make and model number and "unlock" - e.g. Sony DXC776 DVR unlock .... somewhere in google cyberspace there will be a message forum, or guide to tell you how to unlock it and your DVD will be able to play it - usually by typing in a code into your set up menu. Whether or not your TV will show it is another matter but most are now multiformat so I would expect it to be fine.

 

[Frances999]

Yeah, you should be able to "unlock" your DVD player so that it can play UK DVDs. That's what we did

 

[Tron[ADS]]

dlpSteve kind of touches on the problem, but from my experience, its isnt that the TV won't handle PAL output, its the fact that the DVD player itself will probabaly not actualy have any PAL decoding circuitry in it. This is different to a region lockouts.
My uncle had a Samsung DVD player which initialy refused to play his uk disks with a "wrong region" message, and once he handset-hacked it, it still refused with another error message that I cant recall. On investigation we found that there was no PAL decoding circuitry and therefore not a thing could be done.

I think you should be looking at trying other players, maybe as someone suggested, a PS2/3/XBOX/360, they play by software, so may be more accomodating. Of course you may still suffer from the region lockout, and if so, just bung it in a PC and run it through DVD Decryptor, then burn the output on a writable disk. That will remove the region lockout.

Failing that, you could look at actualy converting it to NTSC, but be warned, its not a simple process. www.videohelp.com will have a guide on there on how to do it.

 

[mobius]

If you still have problems try downloading the power dvd software as your PC should be able to play pal encodes. Just beware that most PC dvd software will only switch regions 5 times or so.