Hello everyone

I am looking for the best method of being able to watch PAL DVD's in the USA, aside from using a multi-region DVD player which I do have. I have tried several programs to convert PAL/NTSC and vice-versa and also had programs remove region codes to create region free discs. I have obtained minimal success with various issues cropping up. Hopefully I can find something economical. Is there anyone who can point me in the right direction? Does anybody have any positive experiences with what I am lookin g for.
Thank you very much for any input, feedback or ideas.

the only "economical" option that i ever found was downloading a program called "DVD Santa" which works very well, though it will take you a few practice runs to get it working the way you want to. Plus there's plenty of people here on CDFreaks that use it as well, so you should be able to get a decent amount of support with it.

$25 at your local Best Buy for a Cyberhome player that does PAL->NTSC in hardware.

Otherwise you're just gonna be perpetually pissed off.

I think it should be possible to run AnyDVD in the background and then convert your discs with whatever you like. I´ve done that here in Germany with a few DVDs that I could only find in the US, and converted NTSC to PAL with no problems. Should work the other way around.

You've converted NTSC to PAL with full Menus? And it looked good? What program did you use to do the conversion?

We'd all love to know, since the best and brightest here, at Doom9, and at VideoHelp all consider it to be iffy and extremely time-consuming!

Was perfect.
Movie was Bladerunner (Director´s Cut)
Done it twice using only AnyDVD + Nero

Movie only then? I don't believe you got the menus too, I really just don't.

And ... I've done it with Nero. It kinda sucked. Pretty jumpy due to the lack of pulldown on the conversion.

I agree. I have recently purchased an Aristona ADV434 ( € 50 ) which can both play PAL media on NTSC tv's as well as NTSC media on PAL tv's, depending how you set it up in the configuration screen.

I made it region free and it plays everything, from DivX to region 1 Superbit dvd's, no matter what origin.

As a matter of fact, around 99% of the West-European dvd players can deal with NTSC and PAL automatically.

Thanks for the input everyone. Since I posted the thread I managed to locate a very good program that converts my PAL to NTSC. Amazingly enough it is FREE. It is called vobblanker. It made superb copies and the only drawback was the lack of menus. That seems to be a very difficult challenge, finding any conversion with menus. If anyone would like to know how I did it let me know. Mind you I just found out that the discs do not always play back in all DVD players. My conversions played fantastic in my cheap Broksonic DVD/VCR and in my JVC player. However when I tried it in my son's Sony DVD player there was a lot of green shadow/light on the top and bottom. When my neighbor tried it on his DVD player it did not even play back. Pretty strange I think. Seems to be a case of compatibility between disc and player? One note on DVDSAnta. I tried that twice and obtained a beautiful picture but the audio and video were completely out of sync. If anyone knows how to fix that please post it.
Thanks again for the input.

I've posted this a dozen times, but I'll put it in here again just to be nice.

The VOB Blanker method is a TRICK. Essentially it just psyches out your DVD player by making it THINK it's getting NTSC data, but then feeding it PAL data. You haven't really converted anything.

The percentage of players this works with is somewhat LESS than half. So if you try it on 10 players, maybe 3-4 will take this disc. And of those, some will look all wrong. So essentially you're very lucky that this works in your player.

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The DVD Santa method, as well as any other one-click converter like Nero... has the problem that it does NOT do the proper pulldown. At best you'll get a synched image that's pretty "jumpy" because it tries to catch up the missing 5 frames per second... or at worst one that is, as you noted, completely out of sync.

Just get a PAL player. Seriously. They're cheap - $25.

Yes Gurm I think you are right about that.
I was also looking for the conversion in reverse NTSC to PAL for my parents so they can buy the discs over here and convert them to watch in the UK.
Maybe you, or anyone, can answer a couple of questions for me. If they buy discs over here in US and I remove region code using anydvd, would this enable them to play on their DVD player in UK? (it plays NTSC region 0 discs).
Second question - Is there agood converter/burner software for conversion of all types of media files to DVD. I have tried many and not had much luck in any consistency?
Thanks to all for any feedback.

Us people in Europe are a little but luckier - the majority of DVD players and TV's (don't forget your TV also has to be able to play NTSC format video) in Europe will play NTSC format no problem. The only sticking point is the region code. Again, most players are made for a global market and it is only a software block that prohibits multiregion playback. If the player is unlocked, all you have to send the discs!!

Abrown is right on target - if your parents player and tv support NTSC Region 0, just backup your US discs removing the region code and they'll play fine over there.

Actually, if you look on VideoHelp in their DVD Players section, you might find that there's a hack for the player that removes the region code limitation entirely - then you don't have to make backups, you can just watch your originals!

Thank you very much.
You answered my questions beautifully.
Just have one more. Is there a way to verify that the region code has been removed on a backup copy by doing some kind of data review on the disc itself. Something like the properties function to check a file on your computer?

Yeah - run DVD Decrypter and stick the disc in. Right in the summary it'll tell you what region(s) it supports.

Or AnyDVD.

Or, I imagine, probably DVDFab Decrypter as well.

Thanks very much.
Appreciate all feedback.
I don't have DVD decryptor and cannot seem to locate it anywhere. Loaded disc in ANYDVD and DVDfabdecryptor and neither one of them was able to tell me region code of disc. Probably I did not do something right.

Never mind folks I figured it out.
Thanks again for your help.