MARK MURPHY: MURPHY'S MOOD

What are NTSC and PAL?

• NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) is a standard used in North America and Japan. It has the ability to display up to 525 lines of resolution on your television.
• PAL (Phase Alternating Line), a standard used almost everywhere else in the world, has the ability to display 625 lines of resolution on your television.

What DVD standard does my country use?

If you're in North America, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and parts of South America, you use NTSC. Most other areas of the world use PAL. Half of Brazil uses NTSC while the other half uses PAL-M. Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay use PAL-N. The rest of the world uses mainly PAL.

What Does This Mean?

What this means is that if you live in a country that uses NTSC, only this format will be compatible with your player. If you live in a country that uses PAL, most likely only this format will work for you. However, there are many players that will play both formats. The best bet is to check the manual for your DVD player before making a purchase.

What Is the DVD Region System?

DVDs themselves are encoded for a specific region or indicated as 'all region.' On the back cover of many DVD packages, you will a find a region number (0 thru 6) placed inside an image of the Earth. This refers to which region the DVD is encoded for.

The geographical regions are as follows:

• REGION 0: ALL AREAS OF THE WORLD
• REGION 1: USA AND CANADA
• REGION 2: JAPAN, EUROPE, SOUTH AFRICA, AND MIDDLE EAST
• REGION 3: SOUTH KOREAN, TAIWAN, HONG KONG, AND SOUTH EAST ASIA
• REGION 4: AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, CENTRAL AMERICA, MEXICO, AND SOUTH AMERICA
• REGION 5: EASTERN EUROPE, RUSSIA, INDIA, AND AFRICA
• REGION 6: CHINA

The way this works is that DVDs encoded for regions other than Region 1 cannot be played on a region 1 DVD player. In addition, DVD players marketed for other regions cannot play region 1 DVDs. All region (region 0) DVDs may be played anywhere in the world.

The region system was designed to protect copyright and film distribution rights in the sense that movie studios can dictate who can watch what and when.

Please note that there are code free or Universal DVD players on the market that will play any disc from anywhere. Most Home DVD players are subject to region code restrictions, but most computer DVD players will play any DVD.