Why are the labels on DVD's have region codes where some disks say it can be played on all regions? Same with NTSC,PAL and PAL-SECAM TV sets, cant they make TV sets that can be used anywhere in the world without those specs?
2006-06-11 09:05:43 · 3 answers · asked by duh?? 2 in Consumer Electronics ➔ Home Theater
It's kind of like how you drive on different sides of the road in different countries, or how British people spell it "colour" and Americans spell it "color", or how phone numbers use different styles. It's a country thing.
NTSC is the (American) National Television Systems Committee, a group that the US created in 1953 to define a standard television format. This format is also used in Japan. PAL stands for Phase Alternating Line and is the technology used in Europe, Asia, etc. SECAM stands for Sequential Couleur a' Memoire (Sequential Color with Memory), and is the French system. All of these are different ways of encoding TV signals. The main practical difference is that PAL screens are slightly different proportionally (I think they are slightly wider) from NTSC screens. SECAM works mainly like PAL but it's a little different in the wiring. You can often find NTSC and PAL converters for video at various international stores. They don't make DVDs for both NTSC and PAL because the screen size is a little different, so they'd have to put two copies of the video on there.
Region codes are different. This is mainly something by the studios so importers can't buy a bunch of DVDs in America (or Japan) the day they come out and go sell them in another country, where the DVD would only go on the market a month or so later. This is entirely an artificial thing for controlling the market - unlike NTSC vs. PAL, there is no technical difference between the regions. You can have an NTSC region 1 DVD as well as a PAL region 1 DVD. There are some lawsuits about region-coding (they affect "free trade"), but they don't seem to be getting anywhere.
A couple of DVD players are "region free" - they don't check the region code - but the newer DVD discs don't work on region-free players. There are TVs that support both NTSC and PAL, but they are more expensive (since you need two different decoding circuits), and it will show small black bars in one of the modes.
2006-06-11 09:34:49 · answer #1 · answered by geofft 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I don't know why there are differemt specs for different parts of the globe. But as for the region code thing try here.
2006-06-11 09:24:48 · answer #2 · answered by Andross07 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I can't really explain, but i think they just wanna rip people off
2006-06-11 10:27:29 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋