Suggestions for a good PAL/NTSC player.

[runcible]

One of my relatives has just come back from Russia with a large collection of old Russian movies on DVD, and was totally dissapointed when he couldn't play them on his American home theater system, even though they are all-region. What he was told was, that certain DVD players can play PAL DVDs, even on an American TV with all domestic equipment. Is this true, and if so, what's a good plyer capable of doing this? (I guess he's looking for something cheap and store-bought, because he's got a phobia about ordering online)

[SeeMoreDigital]

There are many DVD players that can spin PAL and NTSC disc's and output the corresponding video signal...

...However, whether or not your friends TV can decode a PAL (or SECAM) video signal is another issue to consider!


Cheers

[zilog jones]

Yes, unless the player can convert the colour system - most PAL players can convert NTSC colour to PAL either as an option or by default - but I dunno what it's like with NTSC players. If it can't, you'll end up with a black & white picture - and not a very good b&w picture at that!

Any modern TV set (i.e. anything with fully electronic controls) shouldn't have any problem changing between 50 and 60Hz diplays, so at least that's not an issue.

[runcible]

Thank you for your help, but it seems like we've solved this on our own. I'm going to describe how, for anyone having a similar problem. It turns out that Russian DVDs, (which are SECAM not PAL, my bad) are really easily played on any player with the appropriate region. The one we chose for this purpouse is the Cyberhome 300, which is super cheap, super easy to get in the US, and a complete no-brainer for changing regions. Once the region is set to 5, the DVDs play perfectly, with no convertion needed.