My brother purchased a video CD in China. Brand, Peilida. All the instructions are in chinese. It runs version 1.1, 2.0, 3.0. Movies in Australia are version 6.?. Is it possible to upgrade the player, or am I destined to only play discs from irreputable sources in asia?

-- Keith Webster (kwebster@lm.net.au), September 09, 2000

Answers

There are 3 VCD standards. 1.0 1.1 and 2.0, 3.0 was never ratified and was swallowed up by SVCD. There is no version 6, 5, 4, or 3. Could you be mistaking region codes for verion numbers. Australia should be region 4 not 6 then 6 is china.

If you are talking about VCD's not DVD's then the player should support them. As for anything else... your gonna have to check with the manufacturer or distributor.

-- eric (eric@nospam.snowmoon.com), September 09, 2000.

You probably got it all mixed up. If that is a Video CD-only player you can play VCD ver 1.1, 2 and 3. Little difference between the first two, 3 is SuperVCD. If that player also plays DVD this is where region coding comes in. Australia is region 4 but I'm told region coding is not strictly enforced there. China is region 6. You look at the front panel and you know instantly if it's a DVD player also because the DVD logo will always be unashamedly emblazoned there. Other than that you can only play VCDs/SVCDs with it if you can get these. Whether they come from irreputable sources in Asia is another topic and to avoid this most of the people in this forum make their own VCDs. Maybe you should, too.

-- Mehmet T (turk690@yahoo.com), September 10, 2000.