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Today for $53 I purchased a Polaroid DVD Player from Best Buy. It comes with a $10 mail-in rebate so it could end up costing me only a little over $43.

So far with the little I've tried it out it seems okay. It does appear to boot up the disks a little slow but I was surprised to see that it lets you choose what format you are viewing. What I mean is that there is a button on the remote that lets you choose NTSC, PAL, PAL-60, or Auto. I didn't know that the mainstream stores sold DVD players that would let you switch between formats like that.

Am I wrong or should that mean that I should be able to play more than just Region 1 DVDs on this player? Or, is region totally separate from format? It also plays MP3, and JPEGs but I doubt I'll use it for either.

Anyway, part of the reason I picked this player up was because my old Panasonic has been developing more problems this last month. It had decided to refuse to play disks that it had previously played with no problems. It's long been a little overly sensative but it wasn't until it decided that it wasn't going to play Equilibrium when it used to play it with no problems that I decided to start looking for a new player or if I should get this one fixed.

The price for this one made me decide to give it a try. If it only works well for a year (which is how long the manufacture's garuntee is) I figure it's worth it. I had a VCR that we tried to get fixed once and it ended up not being worth the money and effort. It would have been better to just get a new one, and DVD players seem to be getting close to same way. I don't particularlly like that because it seems very wasteful but if things are priced that way what can you do?

Functions this player has that I hadn't seen on others before include a screen saver and a volume control that contols the player's volume output (instead of controlling the tv's speakers directly like a univeral remote).

It's not progressive scan but then I don't think my tv is either.

Region is seperate from the video standard.

Yes. Even my European Playstation 2 can play NTSC movies if they are coded to Region 0 or 2.

Some televisions on the other hand can't properly show PAL and NTSC.

Thanks for the information both of you.

Aren't the different video standards generally isolated into different regions?

I'm just asking because it seems odd that they'd make a player that could switch between the different formats unless that part is easier to include in all versions than building versions only for the regions that use specific formats.

So I guess the Region is probably done by software but the format is a little more complicated?

Tsyroc wrote:Thanks for the information both of you.

Aren't the different video standards generally isolated into different regions?

No problem.

I wish I had more info on this matter, but from what I know Europe, Africa and parts of Asia use the PAL standard. I believe Australia uses it too.

Rest of the world uses NTSC.

I think the main difference between the two standards is how much frames per second they show. NTSC is 29 FPS while PAL is 25 FPS. The latter has better picture quality, though -- or so I've heard.

Tsyroc wrote:So I guess the Region is probably done by software but the format is a little more complicated?

Yeah, the PAL/NTSC is about the type of video signal and "technical" stuff like that. Region coding is done by software, as you said. For example, you can simply hack Region 0/2 encoded DVD players to accept DVDs from all Regions.


Someone who is more knowledgeable than I am can probably help you tad better.

PAL also has a higher resolution than NTSC.

Play a PAL tape/disc on an NTSC player and you'll get sound but no picture.

SECAM is just a slight variant of PAL that's used primarily in France and their territories and former colonies. The difference is so slight that, IIRC, they're still totally compatable with each other.

Tsyroc wrote:Thanks for the information both of you.

Aren't the different video standards generally isolated into different regions?

I'm just asking because it seems odd that they'd make a player that could switch between the different formats unless that part is easier to include in all versions than building versions only for the regions that use specific formats.

So I guess the Region is probably done by software but the format is a little more complicated?

Indeed. Example: GB, France and Japan are all Region 2, yet they all have different video standards, PAL, Secam and NTSC respectively. DVD region is done globally (mostly to protect the sales of the film studios) while the video norms tend to be a more national thing.

PAL's color handling is far superior to NTSC as well.

Actually, quite a few countries use SECAM.

So if PAL is superior to NTSC why is the US not using it?


Will it even matter when the country eventually switches over to HDTVs or is that going to make the differences even more noticable?

Because we established NTSC and the UK established PAL.

I don't see how the switch to HDTV would do much, considering that the US doesn't use PAL.

EDIT: Actually, I don't think the monitor (TV) matters much in the issue.

Tsyroc wrote:So if PAL is superior to NTSC why is the US not using it?

Because we implemented NTSC before PAL existed, and NTSC is backwards compatibly with the old B&W transmissions.

Will it even matter when the country eventually switches over to HDTVs or is that going to make the differences even more noticable?

Europe uses DVB for digital video transmission, IIRC. The US will use ATSC and Japan uses ISDB.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Because we established NTSC and the UK established PAL.

I figured it was something like that.

Just like the different electrical power standards differ in homes

phongn wrote: Because we implemented NTSC before PAL existed, and NTSC is backwards compatibly with the old B&W transmissions.

PAL isn't compatable to the old B&W transmissions? That sucks.

I figured there was some sort of compatability issues kind of like how the US had been dragging it's feet on upgrading television.

phongn wrote:Europe uses DVB for digital video transmission, IIRC. The US will use ATSC and Japan uses ISDB.

Great. Should I suppose that these formats won't be compatable with each other?

The actual content may be, but the method of transmission may not. I don't know enough about the various standards to really tell.

Tsyroc wrote:

phongn wrote: Because we implemented NTSC before PAL existed, and NTSC is backwards compatibly with the old B&W transmissions.

PAL isn't compatable to the old B&W transmissions? That sucks.

I figured there was some sort of compatability issues kind of like how the US had been dragging it's feet on upgrading television.

PAL is compatible with B&W. Basically the US was the first to implement a colour transmission standard and when PAL was developed later on they actively avoided the problems that plagued NTSC.