Region 0 DVDs

In article , Marky P
wrote:


I think it just comes down to lack of demand for PAL in the US. I
believe there are some TV sets in the US that can display PAL.

Symptom of the way the disc authors blandly assume we will all put up with
NTSC. There would be a 'demand' if people in the USA found they needed PAL
compatability to play the kinds of discs I have been referring to. Hence
the point I made in an earlier posting.

TBH I am far from sure that the sales of DVDs of classical music
performances in the USA are vastly higher than they are for the entire
European area. Given that many of the discs are of European performances,
and often have been transmitted in Europe as a PAL original the whole
behaviour seems lazy or arrogant to me.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html

In article , Kim wrote:
Generally speaking, the field scan generators in American sets are crystal*
locked to 60Hz.

I've seen lots of service manuals for television sets, many of the modern
ones showing the alternative circuitry for various international versions,
but I've never, ever, seen one that showed a crystal oscillator in either the
line or field timebase circuits. I'm sure it's possible to do it, but I've
never seen one. Crystals are used in the colour decoding circuitry where a
different level of stability is required, but not in the timebases. American
timebase circuits look just like everybody else's with a few slightly
different resistor values.

It's a requirement of a field scan generator that it can recover from a
discontinuity such as might result from switching to a different channel,
within two or three cycles, otherwise the effect is very disturbing. A
crystal oscillator would respond much too slowly, so in fact it would make
matters worse. Mostly the oscillators are just based on RC charging circuits
and free-run about 10%-20% slow unless triggered.

Rod.

On 27 Feb, 15:32, "David" wrote:
wrote in message





Anyone any ideas?

Yes, try it, then tell us if it plays the region DVDs you have.

My original post was somewhat short on useful information - sorry.

I'm a bit further on than I was.

There are two discs, both "Region 0". One will play fine in my
Panasonic DMR-E55, the other will not. When the blue DVD logo
appears, it has a message superimposed on it to the effect that "You
cannot play discs from this region". This disc plays fine in my PC.

The Panasonic manual states that "You cannot play DVD-Video if their
region number does not include "2" or "All". The DVD-Video region
number indicates the disc conforms to a standard. You cannot play
discs that do not have a region number". I've been in touch with the
supplier of the discs (I'm in the UK, the discs are from the USA) and
he says that both discs were manufactured and encoded identically.
The only difference I can find is that the one that doesn't play has
24bit PCM. I suppose it's possible that the one that DOES play has
flags 1-6 set, and the other has no flags set - both therefore Region
0, but only one playable in my picky and hitherto unimpeachable
Panasonic player. What I need is a tool that will read the underlying
flags of the Region code.

Thanks

Edward

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:36:19 -0000, Roderick Stewart
wrote:

crystal oscillator would respond much too slowly, so in fact it would make
matters worse. Mostly the oscillators are just based on RC charging circuits
and free-run about 10%-20% slow unless triggered.

Rod.



Oscillators in TVs aren't triggered. If they were the timebase would
stop in the abscence of a signal. The are synchronised and run slow in
the abscence of a sync signal.

In message , John Evans
writes
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:36:19 -0000, Roderick Stewart
wrote:

crystal oscillator would respond much too slowly, so in fact it would make
matters worse. Mostly the oscillators are just based on RC charging circuits
and free-run about 10%-20% slow unless triggered.

Rod.



Oscillators in TVs aren't triggered. If they were the timebase would
stop in the abscence of a signal. The are synchronised and run slow in
the abscence of a sync signal.

Which explains why a set with a 50Hz field will usually lock to a 60Hz
signal, but not vice versa.

But I think you are splitting hairs over Rod's use of 'triggered'. His
explanation is absolutely 100% correct.
--
Ian

In message
,
writes
On 27 Feb, 15:32, "David" wrote:
wrote in message





Anyone any ideas?

Yes, try it, then tell us if it plays the region DVDs you have.

My original post was somewhat short on useful information - sorry.

I'm a bit further on than I was.

There are two discs, both "Region 0". One will play fine in my
Panasonic DMR-E55, the other will not. When the blue DVD logo
appears, it has a message superimposed on it to the effect that "You
cannot play discs from this region". This disc plays fine in my PC.

The Panasonic manual states that "You cannot play DVD-Video if their
region number does not include "2" or "All". The DVD-Video region
number indicates the disc conforms to a standard. You cannot play
discs that do not have a region number". I've been in touch with the
supplier of the discs (I'm in the UK, the discs are from the USA) and
he says that both discs were manufactured and encoded identically.
The only difference I can find is that the one that doesn't play has
24bit PCM. I suppose it's possible that the one that DOES play has
flags 1-6 set, and the other has no flags set - both therefore Region
0, but only one playable in my picky and hitherto unimpeachable
Panasonic player. What I need is a tool that will read the underlying
flags of the Region code.

Thanks

Edward

I've had a bit of a search on the procedure for making a DRM-E55
code-free. From what I can see, it does seem to be a bit of a pig
compared with many other DVD players/recorders. Unless you really
welcome a challenge, dare I suggest that you give up, and buy one of the
many cheap players (£20?) which will do the job? Although the spec
doesn't say so, my Alba happily plays NTSC Region 1 and PAL Region 2,
straight out of the box (and you can select real NTSC output if you
wish).
--
Ian

In article
,
wrote:
On 27 Feb, 15:32, "David" wrote:


There are two discs, both "Region 0". One will play fine in my
Panasonic DMR-E55, the other will not. When the blue DVD logo appears,
it has a message superimposed on it to the effect that "You cannot play
discs from this region". This disc plays fine in my PC.

The Panasonic manual states that "You cannot play DVD-Video if their
region number does not include "2" or "All". The DVD-Video region
number indicates the disc conforms to a standard. You cannot play discs
that do not have a region number". I've been in touch with the supplier
of the discs (I'm in the UK, the discs are from the USA) and he says
that both discs were manufactured and encoded identically.

Well, if the non-playing disc isn't a faulty one, then your experiment
apparently refutes his theory. :-)

Contact them again and ask which is more likely, that the disc is faulty
and should be replaced, or that his theory is incorrect. If the former,
then a replacement or refund would be due, I assume.

The only difference I can find is that the one that doesn't play has
24bit PCM. I suppose it's possible that the one that DOES play has
flags 1-6 set, and the other has no flags set - both therefore Region 0,
but only one playable in my picky and hitherto unimpeachable Panasonic
player. What I need is a tool that will read the underlying flags of
the Region code.

When a disc is marginal or faulty in some way it can be hard to predict in
advance which players/drives will play it OK, and which won't.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html

In article , Ian Jackson wrote:
Oscillators in TVs aren't triggered. If they were the timebase would
stop in the abscence of a signal. The are synchronised and run slow in
the abscence of a sync signal.

Which explains why a set with a 50Hz field will usually lock to a 60Hz*
signal, but not vice versa.

But I think you are splitting hairs over Rod's use of 'triggered'. His*
explanation is absolutely 100% correct.

Thanks. In a way he's correct because a field timebase will oscillate
without any external trigger pulses, i.e. it doesn't just stop, though
you could say that in the absence of an external pulse the field timebase
oscillator will eventually trigger itself. It must wait till a little
time after the expected time of the external pulse before doing so of
course, which is why the free-running frequency of this type of
oscillator is lower than the synchronised frequency (unlike a flywheel
oscillator where it's nominally the same).

Rod.

In article , Jim Lesurf wrote:
TBH I am far from sure that the sales of DVDs of classical music
performances in the USA are vastly higher than they are for the entire
European area. Given that many of the discs are of European performances,
and often have been transmitted in Europe as a PAL original the whole
behaviour seems lazy or arrogant to me.

Quite a lot of European or British recordings are released first in the
USA, and are unobtainable in their country of origin for some time. Thank
goodness for Amazon and region-free DVD players.

Rod.

Dave Farrance wrote:

Only Brazil with the obscure PAL-M gets trouble.

And oh boy, *do* they have trouble. (PAL-M being NTSC frame/line rate
and PAL composite colour.) Just out of curiosity, I've searched thorough
some Brazilian technical forums, using Google to translate from the
Portuguese. The recurrent theme is people tearing their hair out over
black-and-white pictures and/or de-synchronised pictures and getting much
confused and contradictory advice.

Fix it by using SCART? They don't have SCART. Recent TVs there are
supposed to have S-video inputs and handle both NTSC and PAL, but
unofficial imports exceed official imports by 50%, so they get a mix of
everything.

Are they learning from their problems? For digital TV, instead of
choosing DVB-T like Europe (including Portugal, where all their relatives
are) or ATSC like all the countries around them, they've chosen ISDB, the
go-it-alone Japanese standard. Wonderful.

--
Dave Farrance