How can I watch PAL DVDs on a regular NTSC TV?

Dave, I want a DVD player that plays PAL DVDs on a regular NTSC TV. My dear brother bought me a Philips dvp642; we popped in a DVD he had bought me from amazon.de and it wouldn't work. Somebody had mentioned a cyberhome dvd player they had gotten at Fry's for around $50, but it doesn't seem to exist. How can I make the present DVD player work or do I need extra parts or a different TV. Help!!

Dave's Answer:

I went through just this situation with some UK DVDs I bought a few months ago, and I bought a Philips DVD player that was already advertised as mutli-region, multi-format. It's not a great DVD player funcionality-wise, but it plays every kind of DVD and CD I have tried, which is very nice.

From sites like Popular Elect.com I get the impression that the Philips DVP642 can be made into a multi-region, multi-format DVD player, but given what you're saying, I expect that there's some tricky stunt or fiddling you need do to have it switch and give you access to all its capabilities.

According to the site Video Help, here's what you need to do with your remote control to make your player region free:

Turn on the player
Open the tray.
Press the following sequence on the remote: 7 8 9 OK 0
The number 0 will appear on the lower left side of your screen.
Your player is now region free! Put in a DVD and enjoy! :)

The site also adds this note: "The 0 in the sequence above represents the region code. 0 = region free. If you want to change your player to just a specific region code, replace the 0 with the region number you want. "

Try that, see if it works. Please note that any time you mess with these sort of devices, there's a chance things will get messed up. If that happens, cycle power or even unplug it overnight to reset it.

Good luck!

Categorized: d) None of the Above (Article 3876, Written by Dave Taylor)
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Comments

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Anyway...Have a great day...I'll just say that I meant no offense, and leave it at that...
Best of luck to you and yours...QLoftheR

Posted by: Queen Linda of the Rosaria at October 12, 2006 2:20 AM

Please advise: I have purchased (from a USA store in Ohio) a DVD which (the seller tells me)says on its case/package that it is "PAL Region Free". I have a DVD player that is nothing special, on which I can play Region One DVDs (but not other-region DVDs). I have no ability to alter the DVD settings nor my TV settings. Am I in an incompatibility situation? Thank you for your advice.

Posted by: Michael Morris at February 16, 2007 5:08 PM

Michael, PAL and NTSC are indeed incompatible, so unless your DVD player has the circuitry enabled to do the conversion, you are out of luck, sorry to say.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at February 16, 2007 8:54 PM

I have a Philips DVP3020 dvd player purchased in the UK and am trying to play using an NTSC TV in USA. The DVD player has been bashed to make it a region free player (before I bought it) and I am trying to play UK DVDs on it to view through my NTSC TV. The DVD has a SET UP screen which allows a change from PAL to NTSC (as the DVD literature says it works with both) but when I try to change it to NTSC it just jumps back to PAL again as if ignoring my instruction to reset it. Do you think there is something wrong with the DVD player or have I got the wrong end of the stick here and have the wrong type of dvd player? By the way if I try to play the DVD it is either jerky, will not play at all or plays in b&w.

Posted by: Mrs Y Newbury at December 18, 2007 9:35 AM

I have a Panasonic dvd-s35 that plays ntsc dvds. Is there a chance of watching pal dvds on it?

Posted by: Ximena at December 23, 2007 4:12 PM

I have a Sony dvd player and I'm trying to play my PAL dvds on an NTSC TV but I can't so what do I need to do to to be able to watch it?

Posted by: Teresa at January 27, 2008 9:07 PM

Can I play a PAL formatted DVD on my Dell 1100 Inspiron Laptop Computer. It has Mircosoft Media Player on it.

Posted by: cindy Martin at February 21, 2010 3:14 AM

Cindy, I'm pretty darn sure that something like AnyDVD [ http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html?aid=50283 ] will do the trick. Your drive can read both PAL and NTSC, as far as I know, so the issue you'll hit is the region encoding, but AnyDVD lets you sidestep that. Try it out, let us know how it goes...

[note, the above is an affiliate link for the product]

Posted by: Dave Taylor at February 22, 2010 11:50 AM

i have a dolby dvd player is there a way i can play pal dvd's on my ntsc. thanks

Posted by: gloria at March 25, 2010 1:15 PM

i have a phillips 5990 i had to use a hack code on it but it plays all my dvds just fine except the pal region 2 i just bought it plays it perfect picture and sound but the movie stutters or delays for half a second through the whole movie dont know what that is could you help iv tried composite cables as well in the us thank u

Posted by: luisllado at March 31, 2010 4:09 PM

Dave,
I have a Panasonic DVD DMR ES35V
Where can I find the code to allow it to play PAL? Thanks
John

Posted by: john r willilams at May 8, 2010 3:07 PM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

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