Playing region 4 DVD's on region 1 player?

[tkmops]

I’m not sure if this is the right forum for this question, so I played it safe and went with
‘newbies’. Mods, feel free to move this to a more appropriate forum.

I’ve read somewhere(it might have been here), that one can play a non-native region
coded DVD on their PC’s DVD drive ‘X’ times before it ‘locks’ into the region of
the last DVD played. For example, I’m looking to playing region 4 DVD’s in my region 1 PC DVD player.

Does anyone know how many times the ‘X’ is? And, what exactly is considered ‘a time’?
For example, would playing a region 4 DVD in my region 1 player, and then going back
to playing region 1 DVD’s be considered one time? Or, would playing multiple region 4 DVD’s, and then going back to playing region 1 DVD’s be considered one time?
Or, is ‘a time’ counted another way?

Does this make sense?

[setarip_old]

Hi!

The reference is to the number of times you can CHANGE regions (5 in total, including the initial Region 1 setting) - e.g. If the next thing you do today is play 10 consecutive Region 4 DVDs and then 3 days from now you play 6 more Region 4 DVDs, the total of all those plays is 1 CHANGE. If you then play 1 Region 1 (any Region other than 4) DVD, that is 1 more CHANGE.

But, not to worry. Perform a search at these forums and/or a Googlesearch. There is software available that eliminates this restriction...

[tkmops]

Thanks for the info! That clears up a lot.:)

[setarip_old]

Thanks for the info!You're quite welcome ;>}

[tkmops]

I just found out that there's more to this than I realized.
The R4 disks that I want to play on my stand alone DVD player are in PAL format. I know that DVD Decrypter removes the coding and makes the decrypted files region-free, but does it also convert the PAL format to NTSC?
Does DVD shrink perform this function? If neither of these programs can convert PAL to NTSC, is there another that will. Is this even possible?

[setarip_old]

does it also convert the PAL format to NTSC? Does DVD shrink perform this function?Nope...

[tkmops]

This should be my last question-it seems there are programs that will convert PAL to NTSC-but it looks to be very confusing and a lot of work. Since I'm OK with with just watching my R4 DVD's on my computer screen, do computer monitors display both NTSC and PAL signals?
I think that I read somewhere that monitors will display both, but I need to be sure before I go and buy my R4 DVD's.

[foxyshadis]

Yeah, though it might be a little jumpy (since 25 and 50 don't go evenly into 60). You can also use the reclock plugin to force films at 25 back down to 24fps, with audio resampled to match.

[kwanbis]

I’ve read somewhere(it might have been here), that one can play a non-native region coded DVD on their PC’s DVD drive ‘X’ times before it ‘locks’ into the region of the last DVD played. Does this make sense?
go to http://www.rpc1.com/ they have region-free firmware for most of the drives. (Unless you have a matshita one)

[525/60]

This should be my last question-it seems there are programs that will convert PAL to NTSC-but it looks to be very confusing and a lot of work. Since I'm OK with with just watching my R4 DVD's on my computer screen, do computer monitors display both NTSC and PAL signals?
What you really need to know is whether the computer software player can convert the PAL aspect ratio to the 1:1 aspect ratio of your computer screen as easily as it does the NTSC aspect ratio. I believe the answer is yes.

In particuliar, I think VCL media player can decode PAL discs properly. It doesn't display subtitles, however.

It is easy to convert PAL to NTSC for FILM-based material. As long as it is not interlaced the following script will work:

LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\DGMPGDec\DGDecode.dll")
mpeg2source("PATH\VTS.d2v")
AudioDub(WavSource("PATH\BeSweet_WavFile.wav"))
AssumeFPS(24000,1001,true).ResampleAudio(48000)
Spline16Resize(720,480)

[tkmops]

Everyone...thanks for all the useful info. I'm going go ahead and buy my DVD's, and hope everything works out.