OK. I've read about a thousand faq's about vcd PAL playability. Some sites seem to think that VCD's despite being PAL format will play on any dvd player with vcd capability. I've read conflicting reports of PAL being played on NTSC tv's. Some sites say it does not matter others say it does. Some say the lines are cut-off but that's about all. I'm currently in the process of selecting a dvd player that can play anything I choose specifically region 2 pal dvd's/vcd's. What gives? I have a Panasonic Rv-30 dvd player. I have not attempted any vcd's yet, but if most vcd's are in PAL format and my tv is NTSC..what is the point of getting vcd's? Please help me end this internal debate. MERC

-- mercury (mercury2114@yahoo.com), August 20, 2001

Answers

If you have a DVD player like an Apex or Sampo that can handle multi-region DVDs, these players can convert between PAL and NTSC so you will have no problem. I live in the US and I have a friend who owns a Toshiba DVD player. He bought a commercial PAL VCD of Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace and it played fine on his DVD player. His DVD player only plays region 1 NTSC DVDs, but it handled the VCD fine. Unless you have something really weird going on with your DVD player, you should NOT have any problems playing PAL VCDs with it, whether the play will handle multi-regions or not. Yes, the DVD players typically just cut off the extra lines to deal with NTSC resolution requirements. I probably should have just skipped that introductory sentence about Apex and Sampo because actually all the DVD players I know of, regardless of manufacturer, handle NTSC and PAL, they just don't advertise it. Buy your VCDs. You will be fine. A lot of people claim various things about VCD and SVCD, but if you push them for details, they will admit that they don't actually know what they say, they just "read it somewhere". The people that say that PAL VCDs won't play in your DVD player do not know what they are talking about.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), August 21, 2001.