Will a Canadian DVD play on a U.S. machine?

[Fozzie54]

Hi everyone,

As I am not wise in the way of DVD coding, does anyone know if a Canadian DVD will play in a U.S. machine? What does it mean that they are "region 1?"

Thanks!

 

[anathema]

Hi everyone,

As I am not wise in the way of DVD coding, does anyone know if a Canadian DVD will play in a U.S. machine? What does it mean that they are "region 1?"

Thanks!

Yes, they will.

All DVDs are flagged to work in one or more geographical regions. Region 1 is the US and Canada, region 2 is Europe and Japan, region 4 is Australia, and so on. DVDs can be set to work in just one region, or in several. An off-the-shelf DVD player will normally only play discs flagged for the local region. However, pretty much any DVD player can be modified to play discs from other regions.

The more important issue is the video standard. Canada, the US, Japan and a handful of other countries use 525/60 NTSC (usually abbreviated to just 'NTSC'); the rest of the world uses 625/50 PAL. (I'm simplifying here While most European players can handle both standards, most US/Canadian players cannot play PAL discs. Unless you plan on importing discs from Europe though, this won't be a problem for you.