Any Americans here who have multi-region players?

[Phill]

Something that i've been wondering for a while. It's been bought to a head by the in-laws wanting a DVD player.

Do you have a pal capable TV or a DVD player that can play european DVDs in PAL?

In the case of the former, are such sets very expensive stateside?

In the case of the latter, how good are the results? I would have thought it'd be quite poor.

I know there are some of our American cousins on the boards, so please don't make me register at DVDtalk.com :p

[clayts]

Hop over to the Forums at Nerd Out (http://www.nerd-out.com) .

There's a whole raft of US players that can handle PAL and NTSC discs over there such as Apex, Daewoo, Shinco, etc.

Of course, I have to be biased and say Sampo, but there is a genuine problem on anamorphic-PAL discs not being presented correctly on a US 4:3 TV over there - apparently a player called the Malata something or other can do it. No problem if you own a 16:9 over there though.

Hope this helps - happy hunting :)

[Phill]

Thanks for the pointer.

It looks like multi-region is a rather newer development stateside. Since the in-laws are planning to upgrade in about 6 months, I reckon I'll wait and see if more TV manufacturers start to make affordable multi standard TVs.

They won't be getting a widescreen TV, that's out of their price range.


Thanks again
Phill

[Eskimo]

My Rotel RDV 985 I bought here in Europe is exactly the same as sold in the USA (except the power cord!), and can play all regions out of the box.

It has a switch on the back of the player to change the output to PAL-50 or NTSC. When talking to some Rotel people in the States, they didn't even know that it was a multi-region player! Probably not a question they get asked often in the USA. Maybe more players are like this.

Eskimo